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it's been a successful language because the web is effing amazing and it's literally your only choice if you want any functionality in a web page. If the origi
by masukomi 7y ago
it's been a successful language because the web is effing amazing and it's literally your only choice if you want any functionality in a web page.
If the original Scheme-like plan for JS had of been used then you'd be saying exactly the same thing about a Scheme.
JS didn't succeed because it was "good" in _any_ way. It succeeded because it was not horrendous and it was/is _the only choice_.
- pacaro 7y agoI mostly agree with you. I think however that it was "the only choice" because it was good enough. It's worth remembering that there was a non trivial time period in which there was a single dominant browser platform which supported alternatives: VBScript was supported through IE10, and is still available in IE11; ActiveX could be used to allow just about any scripting language. Even now it's fairly straightforward to have JavaScript be the output of a toolchain, but not necessarily the input