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I'm not sure why Netscape decided to write their own language for the job. Perhaps integrating a different language into their browser would have been difficult
by tikhonj 15y ago
I'm not sure why Netscape decided to write their own language for the job. Perhaps integrating a different language into their browser would have been difficult back then. Now, however, JavaScript is a well-established language so there is no need to replace it with anything else.
Also, unless I'm unaware of something, wasn't Perl the most popular scripting language back then? So if they had included an already existing language, Perl would probably have been the best bet.
- chromatic 15y agoSo if they had included an already existing language, Perl would probably have been the best bet. Embedding Perl was (and is) painful. Tcl would have been easier. Sandboxing would have been more difficult. Auditing all of Perl 5's operations for the possibility of escaping that sandbox is a huge task.