The History of JavaScript

JavaScript is everywhere, and for the last year in a row, it has had been one of the most commonly used programming languages in the world. Till today, it is has been used to build 95.2% (1.52 billion) of websites, including some of the world’s largest sites, like Facebook, YouTube, etc. Without it, we would not have web apps such as Google Maps and eBay. JavaScript is a scripting language, mostly a client-side language until the introduction of Node.js, allowing JavaScript to execute code on servers. JavaScript vs. Java There’s often some confusion about the two, however, JavaScript and Java are quite different. The name JavaScript came from Netscape’s support of Java applets within its browser. It is also said that it was a marketing tactic to divert some attention from Java, which was the most important language at that time. To run Java programs, the code must be first compiled into an executable form. On the other hand, JavaScript was created to be interpreted at run time, making it much more dynamic (these days the boundary of the two methods is a lot more blurred). JavaScript didn’t start well at first. It didn’t perform as well, and those who developed in Java considered JavaScript more of a “UI glue” to be used mostly by designers and other non-programmers. But the reality is that having a “glue” language allowed the internet to flourish. Programmers could react better to use events and compose interactive components and that made JavaScript popular world wide. In September 1995, Netscape programmer Brandan Eich created a new scripting language in only 10 days. It was originally named Mocha, but quickly became known as LiveScript and on 4th December of 1995, JavaScript. In 1997, due to JavaScript’s rapid growth, it became clear that the language would need to be properly maintained and managed. Therefore, Netscape handed the job of creating a language specification to the European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA), a body founded to standardize computing. The ECMA specifications were labeled ECMA-262 and ECMAScript languages included JavaScript, JScript, and ActionScript. Between 1997 and 1999, ECMA-262 had three revisions, but nearly 10 years later, version 4 was abandoned due to differing opinions on the direction of the language and its proposed features. Interestingly, many of these controversial features, such as generators, iterators, and destructuring assignments, have been included in more recent ECMAScript specifications. Early 2000 – Microsoft upends standardization. Enjoying a 95% market share with Explorer, Microsoft stops working with ECMA International on its JScript language since JScript has become the default client-side scripting. This brings a halt to continued standardization. September 2002 – Firefox changes the standardization game. Mozilla, the successor to Netscape, releases the Firefox browser, which eventually led to the rise of JavaScript again. Firefox was a popular browser that began to take market share from Internet Explorer. In 2004, Mozilla begins working with ECMA International on standardization, but no new specifications are released because of Microsoft’s continued refusal to collaborate. In the year 2005 Ajax (Asynchronous JavaScript + XML) was introduced into JavaScript. This spurred the JavaScript community to begin the development of numerous frameworks and libraries, including: Angular – a framework for building single-page applications Dojo Toolkit – designed to reduce time in developing cross-platform web applications and sites Ember JS – a framework for single-page applications jQuery – library to simplify HTML DOM MooTools – a framework for writing flexible, cross-browser code Prototype JS – a framework for writing web applications React JS – a Facebook framework for writing user interfaces and their components Vue – a framework for web interfaces and single-page applications Following a 2008 event in Oslo, the ECMAScript 4 proposals were scaled back by many organizations and parties involved with JavaScript, including Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. The project was codenamed Harmony and it came to fruition in 2015, when ECMAScript 6 was released. In 2009, A new ECMA standard arrived. After more than one and a half years of effort, the new ECMAScript 5 language specification is released. It is currently in its 11th edition. The CommonJS project defined and promoted JavaScript development outside the browser by using modules to package useful code and functionality. This made the way for Node.js as an environment to run browserless JavaScript. Now the language that ran the front end of the internet was able to tackle the servers behind the scenes. According to GitHub’s 2018 October report, there are more JavaScript code repositories than any other language—and that number is steadily on the rise. With all this choice, it’s somewhat understandable that there has also been a movement toward a more grassroots, “vanilla” implementation of JavaScript. Web components, small reusable custom browser elements, are the latest challenger aiming to be the next breakthrough in the JavaScript world. Whatever the next big thing is, it’s clear that JavaScript is going to be with us for many years to come.