The __proto__ Comic

© all images from ragefac.es and some from knowyourmeme
Being a comic, sentences are not all real, mostly made up for this post.

TC39

WTF is this shit?!

es-discuss

The community needs it and the de-facto library with stars on github uses that instead of [].push.call(new SimplifiedDOMShit, NodeListResult)

TC39

OK, here what we can spec ... making it configurable, so that shit can be dropped at any time in any module

es-discuss

Community, we are going to spec __proto__ shenanigans all over so that any environment will have a special property able to cause more disasters than what eval did before: you should appreciate!

community

so, proto gonna be standard we don't have to change those 2 lines of code?!

me plus some other

what kind of horrible decision is this?

es-discuss

de-facto is de-facto, people use this, people want this! IE ... who cares !

just me

OK, probably this is just a massive misunderstanding between what's truly needed, and what should be proposed ... let's try to fight back in es-discuss ...

es-discuss

You don't understand, you are late, even if not spec'd yet, you are really late

just me

I gonna show you that JavaScript developers understand this is a no-go and it's bad for the language they use on daily basis as bad, and even worse than boring hasOwnProperty check has been for all these years!

still me

Hello Zepto, somebody thinks we are all bigots unable to make simple changes ... here the patch for you repo, it's green, it works, it has no side effect, it demonstrates we are not bigots, what do you say?

Zepto.js

You White Knight bla, bla, bla ... horse shit bla ...

just me

WTF? I can't even explain myself there, they blocked me ... what should I do?

still just me

... well, I gonna see if at least node.js community, with much more unified environment, would accept a proposal...

still me

Hello node, here a patch that is waiting for a patch in V8 so the patch gonna patch the patch, what do you say?

node.js

We don't extend the language and we don't impose coding standards on our users.

again me

Will you consider at least this .. or that ... ?

again node.js

But we're not going to float a patch that adds this feature to V8

still just me

... well, I gonna see if at least V8 will accept my flag that gonna affect node at startup ...

V8

Well, I don't know if V8 will ever accept my patch (update: they didn't ... if in specs, V8 is ignoring Object.setPrototypeOf while IE11 put it there as native function) but actually there is no reason to not accept it, it does not change anything in core, it does not affect anythign around, is something that if explicitly set, enable something that might be specified like that in ES6 in any case so together with all harmony flags and stuff usable when you run d8 or node, what could possibly go wrong?
Let me hope, at least, this is not a conspiracy against my mental sanity ... and if you star it it might go in before node 1 is released, thank you!

sad thing is, Zepto patch was not affecting Zepto performance or logic, neither was breaking things.
Same thing was for node.js, so I started doubting JS community is able to be proactive when it comes to decisions made somewhere else and for the community.
Developers are pragmatic, they use what's available at that time. If this means create a standard out of it, JavaScript will be anarchy and not a language anymore.
And this, my friend, is unfortunately a specifications circle that is not bringing only good things to the JavaScript as your favorite programming language.