> To make a "resource", you'll tack on a new magical method to your POJO, identified not with a standard name [...] nothing to do with Symbol's core purpose of creating unique identifiers.
The core purpose and original reason why Symbol was introduced in JS is the ability to create non-conflicting but well known / standard names, because the language had originally reserved no namespace for such and thus there was no way to know any name would be available (and not already monkey patched onto existing types, including native types).
> Is there another example of an arbitrary method name being called by a keyword? It's not a function parameter like async/await uses to return a Promise, it's just a random method tacked on to an Object using a Symbol to define the name of it. Weird!
`Symbol.iterator` called by `for...of` is literally the original use case for symbols.
> I'd think the proper JavaScript way to do this would be to either make a new object specific modifier keyword like the way getters and setters work, or to create a new global object named "Resource" which has the needed method prototypes that can be overwritten.
Right, so instead of just grabbing a property by its well know unique name aka the entire point of symbols you need to first resolve the property descriptor, check a new completely unnecessary flag, and only then can you call the method. And of course that breaks if anyone either forgets the attribute or fails to check it when calling the parent method.
And you’re now wasting an entire keyword on a property with a fixed name, and code bases which already use that name with different semantics are unable to add `using` compatibility.
The core purpose and original reason why Symbol was introduced in JS is the ability to create non-conflicting but well known / standard names, because the language had originally reserved no namespace for such and thus there was no way to know any name would be available (and not already monkey patched onto existing types, including native types).
> Is there another example of an arbitrary method name being called by a keyword? It's not a function parameter like async/await uses to return a Promise, it's just a random method tacked on to an Object using a Symbol to define the name of it. Weird!
`Symbol.iterator` called by `for...of` is literally the original use case for symbols.
> I'd think the proper JavaScript way to do this would be to either make a new object specific modifier keyword like the way getters and setters work, or to create a new global object named "Resource" which has the needed method prototypes that can be overwritten.
Genuinely: what are you talking about.