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by rakk 3944 days ago
Chrome (logically) already supports features of the new JS spec that 'only now' get put into node. With automatic updates for browser being the trend currently I also think that it is now easier to keep the server and browser support for JS in sync.
1 comments
mattkrea 3944 days ago
Not necessarily. I don't think the v8 team really consider the Node project so breaking changes in v8 take some time to get merged into Node/io.js. This is the reason that arrow functions are only shipping now when v8 marked them complete a while back. AFAIK Node is somewhere around 3+ months behind Chrome.
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ofrobots 3944 days ago
This is not really accurate. Arrow functions shipped in Chrome on Tuesday (Sep 1) with Chrome 45 (V8 4.5).
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mattkrea 3944 days ago
Gotcha. I guess marking them "shipped" just puts them into canary? That was done a while back.

https://code.google.com/p/v8/issues/detail?id=2700

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Arnavion 3944 days ago
V8 has had arrow functions for a long time, but until recently they were not fully spec compliant. That is also why iojs put them behind a flag (separate from the flag that enabled stable harmony features).
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ofrobots 3944 days ago
Yeah, 'ship' means different things in different contexts. In the context of your original comment, node stable is getting arrow functions within a week of Chrome stable getting them.

In general, io.js has been very good at picking up stable V8 soon after it ships in Chrome. The exception was V8 4.3, which was not picked up because of API compatibility issues.

This is not a problem for Chrome because chrome doesn't expose the V8 C++ API to large body of third party module writers like Node does. It takes time to deal with some API changes.

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