Message from JavaScript discussions
October 2018
— Chrome, node (tested on versions 6-10),new Date("5") is April 30th 2001
W3C: “lets spend 10 years refining the ultimate stable DOM spec”
WHATWG members: “lets add stuff because it sounds cool!”
— Firefox, edge and chakracore: new Date("5") is Invalid Date
— Now W3C has to straight up copy WHATWG spec to stay relevant unless they want to wind up making a totally divergent spec, they are forced to pretty much fall in line to avoid more confusion
— W3C contributors are pissed off for that reason
— They got derailed for money
— It’s because WHATWG is browser developers who want market share, not IETF fellows who want good design
— So they are all basically hipsters
— When I was asked this question I mean, at first I thought "okay '5' might coerce to number 5, and it could be 5 milliseconds from unix epoch" which is definitely not in April 2001
— They could have easily created WHATWG as an addendum to add all their new features / pointless BS, but wanted control over it all
— Oh please no
— Don't want "Works best on IE6" bs all over again