It’s very sad to read about the state of the ECMAScript discussions.
Unfortunately, as is the case with many standards, the situation became a tug of war. Standards aren’t just about the good of the community; they are also now recognized as competitive advantages. A new standard for ECMAScript thus became mired in a morass of bickering, infighting, and sometimes, out and out name calling; the politics of competition. It became clear that members could not arrive at the consensus needed to allow a decade of advancements to be incorporated into the next generation of ECMAScript.
It seems to me that Grant Skinner’s speculation that Microsoft is behind the debacle is probably correct. The silly thing is that sticking points appear to be features that AS3 has which make it a proper development platform (namespaces, packages) and lack of which make the JavaScript of today a toy.
Some silver lining. Mike Chambers blogs that “ActionScript 3 isn’t changing and we are not going to dumb down future versions or ActionScript”. This means, perhaps, we will be able to get some movement on the features the community has been demanding for ever (method overloading, private constructors) and have been denied or deferred on the grounds that implementing them would break compatibility with ES4.
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