4 ms·

Imagine how different the programming landscape would look if he had stuck to his guns. We can but dream ...

by jsmcgd 18y ago

SwellJoe 18y ago
You reckon he didn't stick to his guns? I think he did alright for a relatively junior level developer, a lone developer to boot, given the task of "add scripting to the browser". I can imagine far worse fates, particularly given how enamored of Java the entire industry was at the time. I have nothing but respect for Eich and JavaScript. It's held up strikingly well for what could have been, and odds were in favor of it being, a band aid solution. Given the circumstances, I think we're just lucky that Netscape had some of the best developers in the world working on it at that time...because the one who got stuck adding "scripting" happened to be quite gifted and ambitious, and took the task very seriously and came up with something quite clever. It was a very different time, and dynamic languages were a bit downtrodden. Tcl was the closest to a "standard embedded scripting language" and I think I'm comfortable calling JavaScript a more powerful language than Tcl (at least at the time, though I think the two have stayed the same related to one another over that time, despite advances in both). And, of course, Tcl was only popular among UNIX nerds. Getting Windows developers on board might have been a problem...a whole new "simple" language like JavaScript may have been exactly what the industry needed. I dunno. It's certainly apparent that JavaScript has revealed itself to be a very powerful language in the past few years.
- jsmcgd 18y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Javascript. I'm just saddened that we didn't get a complete Scheme. Things like, for example, metaprogramming are massively helpful when interacting with HTML. Collectively we all might have had a lot less work to do.

4 ms·

Imagine how different the programming landscape would look if he had stuck to his guns. We can but dream ...

by jsmcgd 18y ago

Imagine how different the programming landscape would look if he had stuck to his guns. We can but dream ...

SwellJoe 18y ago
You reckon he didn't stick to his guns? I think he did alright for a relatively junior level developer, a lone developer to boot, given the task of "add scripting to the browser". I can imagine far worse fates, particularly given how enamored of Java the entire industry was at the time. I have nothing but respect for Eich and JavaScript. It's held up strikingly well for what could have been, and odds were in favor of it being, a band aid solution. Given the circumstances, I think we're just lucky that Netscape had some of the best developers in the world working on it at that time...because the one who got stuck adding "scripting" happened to be quite gifted and ambitious, and took the task very seriously and came up with something quite clever. It was a very different time, and dynamic languages were a bit downtrodden. Tcl was the closest to a "standard embedded scripting language" and I think I'm comfortable calling JavaScript a more powerful language than Tcl (at least at the time, though I think the two have stayed the same related to one another over that time, despite advances in both). And, of course, Tcl was only popular among UNIX nerds. Getting Windows developers on board might have been a problem...a whole new "simple" language like JavaScript may have been exactly what the industry needed. I dunno. It's certainly apparent that JavaScript has revealed itself to be a very powerful language in the past few years.
- jsmcgd 18y ago
  Don't get me wrong, I'm a big fan of Javascript. I'm just saddened that we didn't get a complete Scheme. Things like, for example, metaprogramming are massively helpful when interacting with HTML. Collectively we all might have had a lot less work to do.