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JS at the time was obviously thrown together in a huge rush as a very poorly designed landgrab during the dotcom IPO goldrush. "Designed by committee" as the a
by neilv 11mo ago
JS at the time was obviously thrown together in a huge rush as a very poorly designed landgrab during the dotcom IPO goldrush.
"Designed by committee" as the alternative is a false dichotomy.
There was already much better work in languages for this kind of purported requirement of non-programmer (or less-programmer) use. JS obviously didn't even try to address those users.
And there were certainly better languages for letting full-programmers accomplish the same things.
Even Sun themselves internally had better work on multimedia Web browser at the time.
Instead, some team just threw anything at being able to make the press release they wanted to make, ASAP, not caring whether it was trash, or they could've even done better within the press release time constraint if they cared.
- lo_zamoyski 11mo agoThere's a market out there, and a first-mover advantage. Technologies are embedded in and product of existing political, social, and economic processes, not standalone entities. Think of all the other "worse" languages that triumphed over their purported betters.
- neilv 11mo agoI agree that first mover advantage is an important concept. I don't know how much it applies to the JS launch situation, but there was definitely a rush.