6 ms·

Ok, but what did people actually think about it? These are just quotes from high-up business people, they're trained to never say anything negative.

by jbob2000 7y ago

danaliv 7y ago
Yeah, this is all marketing/partnership fluff. I'd be much more interested in seeing flame wars from Usenet. :) I was programming back then but I don't remember what the sentiment was at the time. I just remember Microsoft insisting on calling it "JScript" or "ActiveScript" or something because they didn't want to give Java any mindshare over ActiveX.
- jasonhansel 7y ago
  Yep. IE went so far as to add support for VBScript (a language based on visual basic) to compete.
  - Avamander 7y ago
    I now wish there'd be actual Python on the web.
    - badsectoracula 7y ago
      I haven't tested it and it might not work in a recent IE, but at least at the past IE used ActiveScript so any ActiveScript language could be used. Python can be installed as an ActiveScript engine and used via IE. The same applies with other languages too (e.g. Perl, Ruby, etc).
danmg 7y ago
It was not well liked. The majority of webpages did not use it, or it was used very sparingly for things like form validation. Old versions of IE would have a dialog pop up if there was any kind of error during execution which happened frequently.
- jherdman 7y ago
  This. The tooling and development environment for JavaScript has improved by leaps and bounds. As an early adopted I found JS to be a pain in the ass. These days I dare say it's one of my favourite languages.
  - karatestomp 7y ago
    With TypeScript and async/await papering over its greatest sins and inconveniences, it's not half bad.
- asveikau 7y ago
  Not only that, for years afterwards the techie crowd and equivalent of places like HN (I suppose I am mostly talking about slashdot) had a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content, etc. I don't know exactly when the tides turned on this attitude. In 2000 the above were not controversial opinions. By 2010 it was gone, and I saw people call it crazy talk, but it probably happened earlier than that. Probably things like gmail in 2004 were a turning point.
  - LandR 7y ago
    >a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content, I still feel like this.
    - asveikau 7y ago
      Me too, I think. We're a minority though. I'm giving deference to the new normal.
      - karatestomp 7y ago
        My love of a paycheck drives me to give deference to the new normal. Meanwhile real desktop programs are still way more pleasant to use and way more respectful of my system resources, and low- or no-JS websites are still mostly nicer to use and better performing than JS heavy ones.
l33tman 7y ago
As far as I can remember, people didn't really think much about it, after all without all the modern libraries the language was useless, and browsers were only marginally able to run Active-X and Java stuff anyway so people weren't even into the mindset that "this new language could be used to write web apps". To me as a regular user, JavaScript was only there to do annoying popups at the start. Funny how some things never change...
commandlinefan 7y ago
Back then, most all the Javascript you ever saw was client-side form validation. Single-page-apps were still a long way off, so all web apps were built in form submission style: the user fills out some form data, it gets sent to the server, the server tells them they filled it out wrong and re-presents the form to the user. You could make that a little more user-friendly by having Javascript validate the form _before_ the users submitted it: but you had to validate it again on the server side because the user might have Javascript turned off, or might be a hacker. That meant that, for most web developers, Javascript just meant extra work: you had to duplicate your form-validation logic in a very finicky, untestable, untyped programming language. Browser makers were working on adding some flashier stuff like drop-down menus and image rollovers, but they didn’t work across different browsers (all both of them), so even the few people who did know how to use the extensions were encouraged not to. It seemed like everybody who could avoid Javascript did - I can’t really for the life of me understand how the early Javascript developers actually got anything done in it. It was a really painful way to develop software until maybe ten years ago.
keithnz 7y ago
it was something to do very simple things to enhance websites usability. I don't really remember anyone particularly liking it. It was something you tended to learn as little of in a very reluctant way. More exciting was things like Java applets or Flash. I did a bunch of stuff with Java applets and was quite impressed in 95-96 when java first came out. I wrote some simple 2d games (falling block puzzle games) which got semi popular. No way to do that in the js world at the time.
blablabla123 7y ago
I remember doing a tutorial from a computer magazine in the 90s. The article was presenting the basic features like for, while, if... So I thought wow, now I can program stuff in the web browser. The tutorial was then starting with hands-on code, like document.writeln("Hello world!"); Seems quite a natural thing to do when coming from other languages. But after playing around with it for an afternoon, I came to the conclusion: that's too difficult, I rather spend my time on something else. (If I remember correctly, at that time I was comfortable with Basic and had a little exposure to C++ and Pascal)

Ok, but what did people actually think about it? These are just quotes from high-up business people, they're trained to never say anything negative.

danaliv 7y ago

Yeah, this is all marketing/partnership fluff. I'd be much more interested in seeing flame wars from Usenet. :) I was programming back then but I don't remember what the sentiment was at the time. I just remember Microsoft insisting on calling it "JScript" or "ActiveScript" or something because they didn't want to give Java any mindshare over ActiveX.

jasonhansel 7y ago
Yep. IE went so far as to add support for VBScript (a language based on visual basic) to compete.
- Avamander 7y ago
  I now wish there'd be actual Python on the web.
  - badsectoracula 7y ago
    I haven't tested it and it might not work in a recent IE, but at least at the past IE used ActiveScript so any ActiveScript language could be used. Python can be installed as an ActiveScript engine and used via IE. The same applies with other languages too (e.g. Perl, Ruby, etc).

danmg 7y ago

It was not well liked. The majority of webpages did not use it, or it was used very sparingly for things like form validation. Old versions of IE would have a dialog pop up if there was any kind of error during execution which happened frequently.

jherdman 7y ago
This. The tooling and development environment for JavaScript has improved by leaps and bounds. As an early adopted I found JS to be a pain in the ass. These days I dare say it's one of my favourite languages.
- karatestomp 7y ago
  With TypeScript and async/await papering over its greatest sins and inconveniences, it's not half bad.
asveikau 7y ago
Not only that, for years afterwards the techie crowd and equivalent of places like HN (I suppose I am mostly talking about slashdot) had a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content, etc. I don't know exactly when the tides turned on this attitude. In 2000 the above were not controversial opinions. By 2010 it was gone, and I saw people call it crazy talk, but it probably happened earlier than that. Probably things like gmail in 2004 were a turning point.
- LandR 7y ago
  >a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content, I still feel like this.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Me too, I think. We're a minority though. I'm giving deference to the new normal.
    - karatestomp 7y ago
      My love of a paycheck drives me to give deference to the new normal. Meanwhile real desktop programs are still way more pleasant to use and way more respectful of my system resources, and low- or no-JS websites are still mostly nicer to use and better performing than JS heavy ones.

l33tman 7y ago

As far as I can remember, people didn't really think much about it, after all without all the modern libraries the language was useless, and browsers were only marginally able to run Active-X and Java stuff anyway so people weren't even into the mindset that "this new language could be used to write web apps". To me as a regular user, JavaScript was only there to do annoying popups at the start. Funny how some things never change...

commandlinefan 7y ago

Back then, most all the Javascript you ever saw was client-side form validation. Single-page-apps were still a long way off, so all web apps were built in form submission style: the user fills out some form data, it gets sent to the server, the server tells them they filled it out wrong and re-presents the form to the user. You could make that a little more user-friendly by having Javascript validate the form _before_ the users submitted it: but you had to validate it again on the server side because the user might have Javascript turned off, or might be a hacker. That meant that, for most web developers, Javascript just meant extra work: you had to duplicate your form-validation logic in a very finicky, untestable, untyped programming language. Browser makers were working on adding some flashier stuff like drop-down menus and image rollovers, but they didn’t work across different browsers (all both of them), so even the few people who did know how to use the extensions were encouraged not to. It seemed like everybody who could avoid Javascript did - I can’t really for the life of me understand how the early Javascript developers actually got anything done in it. It was a really painful way to develop software until maybe ten years ago.

keithnz 7y ago

it was something to do very simple things to enhance websites usability. I don't really remember anyone particularly liking it. It was something you tended to learn as little of in a very reluctant way. More exciting was things like Java applets or Flash. I did a bunch of stuff with Java applets and was quite impressed in 95-96 when java first came out. I wrote some simple 2d games (falling block puzzle games) which got semi popular. No way to do that in the js world at the time.

blablabla123 7y ago

I remember doing a tutorial from a computer magazine in the 90s. The article was presenting the basic features like for, while, if... So I thought wow, now I can program stuff in the web browser. The tutorial was then starting with hands-on code, like document.writeln("Hello world!"); Seems quite a natural thing to do when coming from other languages. But after playing around with it for an afternoon, I came to the conclusion: that's too difficult, I rather spend my time on something else. (If I remember correctly, at that time I was comfortable with Basic and had a little exposure to C++ and Pascal)