blog: Nova 1.0 (#59)

Author: aapoalas

pages/blog/nova-1.0.md

@@ -0,0 +1,60 @@
+---
+title: Nova 1.0
+description: Entering the major release era.
+date: 2026-03-15
+authors:
+  - name: Aapo Alasuutari
+    url: https://github.com/aapoalas
+---
+
+Today, Nova JavaScript engine has published its first major version 1.0.0! This
+marks the beginning of a new era for the engine where experimental status is
+shed and a relative stability and polishing takes over. This does not mean that
+the engine promises to stay unchanged or even that it is a perfect and
+fully-formed product, however.
+
+## Shortcomings
+
+First it is important to acknowledge some big shortcomings of the engine: if
+you're shopping around for a JavaScript engine for a big product or project,
+we'd be happy if you take a look at Nova as a prospective engine but it is very
+possible it is not the engine for you.
+
+First, the engine's performance is acceptable or even fairly good on small
+datasets and quick scripts, but it is _not_ a fast engine. Performance
+optimisations are unfortunately being shipped on a later ship, and you'll be
+sorely disappointed if you are looking for a V8 killer.
+
+The engine also still has some bigger gaps in its ECMAScript support: the
+`RegExp` object and engine especially are not specification compliant, differing
+on Unicode and character set matching, nor supporting lookaheads, lookbehinds,
+or backreferences. Arrays in the engine do not support sparse storage
+internally, which means that setting the `length` property of an array to be
+excessively large will also reserve excessive amounts of memory. Subclassing of
+`Promise`s also does not work, and a bug currently stops class fields from
+working on subclasses as well. Finally, no WebAssembly support exists at
+present.
+
+But if what you're looking for is a lightweight, easy-to-embed engine for
+running scripts on the smaller side then Nova just might be the engine for you!
+
+## Versioning strategy
+
+Entering the major version era means that SemVer rules will be followed from now
+on: the 1.x family will have backwards compatibility. That doesn't mean that the
+API of the engine won't change, however. Rather, Nova will be following a
+similar versioning model to V8: small, incremental breaking changes may happen
+relatively frequently and in that case new major versions will be published. The
+intent is to publish a new version roughly every few months at least, meaning
+that if need be then new major versions will be published every few months as
+well.
+
+Major versioning gives us a versioning scheme we can use to guarantee backwards
+compatibility with, but we do not aim to give LTS-like API stability guarantees
+for the foreseeable future.
+
+## Onwards!
+
+That's all I wanted to say: Nova is now in the major version era, don't expect
+miracles but do expect a little! Thank you for reading and see you in future
+patch, minor, and major releases!

pages/index.tsx

@@ -20,28 +20,25 @@ function Index() {
       <h1>Welcome!</h1>
       <p>
         Nova is a JavaScript (<a href="https://tc39.es/ecma262/">ECMAScript</a>)
-        and <a href="https://webassembly.org/">WebAssembly</a>{" "}
+        (and in the future <a href="https://webassembly.org/">WebAssembly</a> )
         engine written in Rust and following{" "}
         <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data-oriented_design">
           data-oriented design principles
         </a>
-        . It is currently nothing more than a fun experiment to learn and to
-        prove the viability of such an engine, but may very well become
-        something much more in the future.
+        . The engine is published on crates.io with SemVer versioning without
+        particular LTS guarantees.
       </p>
       <p>
-        The engine is still very limited in it's capabilities only passing about
-        {" "}
+        The engine currently passes about{" "}
         <a href={href(import.meta.resolve("./test262.tsx"))}>
           {((metrics.results.pass / metrics.total) * 100).toFixed()}% of the
-          test262 test suite
+          Test262 test suite
         </a>
-        . However development is ongoing and we are quickly improving the
-        engine. If you are interested in the project, please check out the{" "}
-        <a href="https://github.com/trynova/nova">GitHub repository</a>{" "}
-        and or join our{" "}
-        <a href="https://discord.gg/bwY4TRB8J7">Discord server</a>{" "}
-        where the core team resides and where we discuss development.
+        and is considered ready for small-scale deployment. If you are
+        interested in the project, please check out the{" "}
+        <a href="https://github.com/trynova/nova">GitHub repository</a> and or
+        join our <a href="https://trynova.zulipchat.com">Zulip chat</a> where
+        the core team resides and where we discuss development.
       </p>
       <section>
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