JavaScript Announced 30 Years Ago
16 points by carlana
16 points by carlana
This press release from Dec. 4, 1995 announced JavaScript and began the 30 year long tradition of conflating it with Java.
1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.
"Programmers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Java because it was designed from the ground up for the Internet. JavaScript is a natural fit, since it's also designed for the Internet and Unicode-based worldwide use," said Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research at Sun. "JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect HTML-based content to Java applets."
Honestly, can anybody say this has been positive?
I can! Thanks in large part to JavaScript, it is now very easy to distribute sandboxed “write once, run anywhere” GUI-based software to users of basically any modern computing device. JS is pleasant to write (albeit not my absolute favorite language), relatively easy for new contributors to learn, and comes bundled with remarkably powerful devtools. Meanwhile, distributing non-JS crossplatform software with any kind of nontrivial GUI still basically sucks. I’m really glad JS was introduced and that it’s improved so much since I started using it – if it wasn’t so easy to distribute JS projects I probably wouldn’t have bothered making like half the software I’ve made.
For all its quirks it is better than VBScript… which if mid-90s Microsoft had got its way might have been a contender.