A short history of JavaScript
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Born in ten days
- JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich at Netscape in 1995.
- He built the very first version in about ten days — to make web pages come alive.
- It was first called Mocha, then LiveScript, before the name JavaScript stuck.
Not the same as Java
- Despite the name, JavaScript is not Java — they are completely different languages.
- The name was a marketing choice, because Java was the hot language back then.
- A popular joke: Java is to JavaScript as car is to carpet.
One language everyone agrees on
- So every browser behaves the same, JavaScript follows a standard called ECMAScript.
- The big modern update — ES6 in 2015 — added
let,const, arrow functions, and template literals (all in this course). - A group called TC39 keeps improving the language every year.
JavaScript today
- It runs in every web browser, with nothing to install.
- Since Node.js (2009) it also runs on servers — so one language can build the whole web.
- Where exactly is it used? That is the next lesson.
