Understanding the JavaScript — The History

JavaScript is the programming language that lets the Internet work. The Internet would be nothing without JavaScript and in this lesson, you will find out why.

A brief history on how and why JavaScript was created

Keep in mind, JavaScript != Java. Although they share similar names (this was, unfortunately, considered a feature by JavaScript’s early pioneers) that is where the similarities end.

JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich in 1995 during his time at Netscape Communications. It was inspired by Java, Scheme, and Self.

The creators of JavaScript wanted to borrow concepts from other programming languages, such as Java and C. Those of you with backgrounds in other languages may see things that look very familiar, mainly the use of classes and Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) architecture. Keep in mind that JavaScript is not a true OOP language and many things you may be familiar with from another language won’t work with JavaScript.

JavaScript is considered a ‘loosely’ typed language, in which types do exist, but they are not enforced. You do not have to declare a type when creating a variable or an array, for instance.

Why Put the Java in JavaScript?

When Eich created JavaScript in 1995, he created it for Netscape Navigator and it quickly became known as LiveScript. In another quirk of JavaScript history, the team changed the name to JavaScript to reflect Netscape’s support of Java within its browser. While this definitely sounds confusing (and yes, it confuses people to this day), at the time people said it was a “marketing tactic” to connect a brand new language (JavaScript) to a popular language at the time (Java), even though JavaScript and Java have almost nothing to do with each other.

The way Eich saw it, higher-end programmers used Java and it might be considered a “component language.” Eich created JavaScript to fill the need for a “glue language” used by informal programmers and designers. This allowed programmers to use JavaScript to put together components and automate interactions.

There were two dominating web browsers at this point in our JavaScript history: Netscape Navigator (with JavaScript) and Internet Explorer (with Jscript). And by the time the browser world shifted and Internet Explorer became the dominant browser, JavaScript evolved into the endorsed standard for writing interactive processing run in a web browser.

JavaScript Today

Today, JavaScript is still everywhere — it’s the most commonly used client-side scripting language. JavaScript is written into HTML documents and enables interactions with web pages in many unique ways. For example, thanks to JavaScript we can automatically schedule appointments and play online games. Furthermore, new developments, such as Node.js, allow JavaScript on the server-side while APIs, such as HTML5, allow user media control and other device features.

I hope you learned something new here.

Thanks for your time☺️