> date.getFullYear() => 2025

`getYear` is literally deprecated everywhere and is not part of the spec.

https://tc39.es/ecma262/multipage/numbers-and-dates.html#sec...

Right, but it exists and looks correct and runs and won’t trigger any kind of error if you write code that uses it.

This is what we call a ‘foot gun’.

On the other hand, you notice it the second you go use the software you just wrote to ensure it works.

So it’s more like a foot dollar store water gun.

No, it's a proper footgun, same as dereferencing a nullptr in C++. You'll notice that too - doesn't mean it's not a footgun.

And, in fact, most C++ compilers today will actually warn you when you derefernence a nullptr in a stupid, obvious way. Evidently, JS has not caught up to this incredibly sophisticated technology /s.

JS has caught up - it has a sophisticated compilation and linting ecosystem called ‘TypeScript’.

Which at least will tell you you’re using a deprecated API, but won’t overcome the dumb API naming choices JavaScript blindly imported from Java

We've come full circle. The build systems for JS, a scripting language, make C++ compilation look trivial. And, unfortunately, that's reflected in the compile times.

Today you should use getFullYear() => 2025

getYear() returns 125 as it was standard for dates to be offset from 1900 (which led to the Y2K problem). This behaviour should be maintained forever. "Nothing is more important than backwards compatibility"

Or rather, that should be mindset, so that we can achieve at least 90% backwards compatibility in practice.

Yes, a language that was created in 1995 was entirely justified in adopting a convention that would break within five years.

Java 1.0 (also released in '95) had the same behaviour. Java itself borrowed it from `struct tm` in libc, which has the same behaviour from back then up until today. It was standard back then. Whether we like it or not (I don't) doesn't change that fact. And like I said, nothing is more important than backwards compatibility.

It is just programmer education to know to add 1900 to years when using struct tm and also to use getFullYear() in JS.

Why is nothing more important than backwards compatibility between disparate languages written in different contexts for different contexts?

That javascript chose to offset from 1900 was simply because every system back then used to, including Java.

Once that had been done, future versions of javascript had to maintain the same behaviour. This is where I'm using the backwards compatibility argument.

Seems like JS could have called it `getYearOffset1900`, or `getYearOffet`, etc, rather than `getYear`.

Agreed. What I've read is that they basically duplicated the Java API, which had getYear()

I suppose the offset method was really quite entrenched so no one thought to special case that function, instead special casing the "2025" returning getFullYear()