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A comment on Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser? by BrendanEich on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @10:14AM (#8263060)
The question was how JS "won" the browser. The answer is that Netscape (with Bill Joy at Sun) fixed the race and ran it in 10 days. Way too little time to use an existing language and bend it to "look like Java".

Did you read the last link, the HN comment?

Update: http://javascriptjabber.com/124-jsj-the-origin-of-javascript... has more detail.

The point of all this isn't subtle. MS was coming after Netscape, copying and injecting stuff like VBScript. JS was a rush job because of this. If it had waited till Netscape 3 the odds of a VBScript mandatory single scripting language for the Web would've been high. Netscape 4 was way too late.

Only by going out in Netscape 2 did JS preempt that VBScript dystopia. Only by looking like Java did it get management support. Only by being its own language did it happen in ten days.

/be

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser? by miketaylr on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @05:11PM (#8265477)
Have a quick view-source at http://portal.mj.gov.br/EstrangeiroWEB/destaques.asp for those who can't imagine what VBScript dystopia looks like.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser? by danielfilho on Thursday September 04, 2014 @01:18AM (#8266897)
where else you'd find such a pearl?

brazilian government FML! I mean, FTW!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser? by yellow_and_gray on Wednesday September 03, 2014 @10:22PM (#8266470)
Thank you for the links and the explanation, I appreciate it.

The lesson here is a bigger one: how new tech wins a race when it's chased by a big monster truck. Javascript got out there fast/first, looked familiar, and sidestepped conventions.

That Javascript went to ECMA for standardization, to push back on Microsoft, was a nice touch.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser? by fafner on Thursday September 04, 2014 @02:46AM (#8267047)
What would you have changed/used if management hadn't insisted on something that "looks like Java"?

I guess one can't thank you enough for saving the web from VBScript!

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Ask HN: Why did JavaScript win the browser? by BrendanEich on Friday September 05, 2014 @03:22PM (#8275784)
Search for "HyperTalk" in the transcript below the fold at

http://javascriptjabber.com/124-jsj-the-origin-of-javascript...

and you'll see what I wanted to do absent the "make it look like Java" orders. More natural language syntax, no curly braces -- like Logo, Smalltalk, Self, HyperCard.

/be

[ Parent | on HN ]