A really interesting talk from Guy Steele (expert in computer language design) about how computer languages should evolve. Although he is thinking about Java, what he says is entirely applicable to JavaScript.
This is a topical subject, as a new version of JavaScript is being finalized right now, in Ecma. Are the changes good? Or are we just wrecking a perfectly good language? The new JavaScript will be a much bigger language, yet Guy makes a strong argument that we should not evolve languages by adding a ton of features, but by making them easier to extend by individuals.
The talk is very interesting and most of it is not too technical. It is accessible to someone with less programming experience (you may not get the part between “number” and “computer” but don’t be intimidated by that). The talk is 53min long.
I had trouble embedding this video. If it doesn’t work, go this page
