5 ms·
With hindsight, sure, but was that really obvious in 1995 when JavaScript shipped? 1995 saw Java's first public release. PHP was a CGI-thingie that powered Ras
by mseebach 12y ago
With hindsight, sure, but was that really obvious in 1995 when JavaScript shipped?
1995 saw Java's first public release. PHP was a CGI-thingie that powered Rasmus' personal homepage. Tcl and Perl was the state of the art of scripting languages. Ruby was released (it would be another four years before it started getting traction outside Japan). The first edition of O'Reilly's "Programming Python" was published in 1996.
- MichaelGG 12y agoML and LISPs existed. Surely Scheme in the browser would be a better language and implementable in the 10-day window JS had.
- mseebach 12y agoFunctional programming is barely mainstream today, it certainly wasn't in 1995. Netscape had enough on their plate convincing people that "the web" is a cool thing and they should be on it without driving a programming paradigm change at the same time. Seriously, it's 20 years ago. You're operating with extreme hindsight.
- MichaelGG 12y agoDoes ML force much of a paradigm? Make mutable the default if you want. FWIW I wasn't much of a fan of it in the late 90s either.