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JavaScript

Posted by Alessandro Calorì
Alessandro Calorì
10,241 Points

Why is strict mode NOT the default behaviour?

I just keep asking myself why... It makes no sense for a developer tool to fail silently or to allow (not) defining variables in the global scope like that. It makes no sense at all.

BTW, is there a way to enable strict mode by default without "decorating! the JS code?

1 Answer

Nathan Dalbec
Nathan Dalbec
17,111 Points

Essentially because if the teams in charge of browser development did make 'use strict' default, they'd be breaking a lot of sloppy code on the internet, inherently hurting their browser's compatibility. While it being default might disincentive "improper" coding, it'd also be greatly hurting any site that has "improper" code but doesn't have an active developer maintaining it.

Alessandro Calorì
Alessandro Calorì
10,241 Points

I got that far but it seems like ECMA is encouraging crappy code instead. What I meant is that 'use strict' should be default and another istruction could be applied to allow weaker checks on code. Moreover they could just put a warning on non-strictly compliant code instead of failing silently which is useless in any case.