1 . Birth

I was born in the ancient browser Netscape. At that time, web pages were just so boring: it was made up by some ugly static texts and simple pictures. Difficult to imagine, right? It was far worse than the fancy pages today. Just take a look at the famous Yahoo website at that time:

In those days, people still needed to use dial-up service with the help of Modem. What’s worse, people had no choice but to tolerate the creaking sound every single time. It was like an iron sheet scratching the bottom of a pot, trying hard to drive people crazy.

The was just the beginning of torture. The Internet speed was only 28.8 kbit/s, which means that downloading a page can take a very long time.

Once, my creator Brendan Eich wanted to buy something through Netscape, a browser of his company. So he registered, filled in a form, clicked the submit button, waited for 38 seconds, and was told by the server that he forgot to choose sex.

He was so mad. “Fuck! Why can’t the browser just tell me this idiot shit! Are you telling me that I have to submit the data to a server site thousands of kilometers away for an easy check?”

It is imperative to reform the browser.

Brendan Eich went to the boss and said, “I can’t stand it. I need a script language that can run in the browser to help me do what I’m supposed to do in the browser.”

Boss said, “Netscape also had this idea, why don’t you design one?”.

Brendan Eich said, “Well, have you ever heard of LISP (Scheme, to be exact), the best programming language ever? Why don’t we run Scheme in the browser?”

Boss said, “Is there anyone who can use LISP in our company?”

Brendan Eich was speechless.

Boss said, “We’re now working with Sun company. Have you heard of Java, something they just invented? Applet is just awesome when running in the browser. Java must be the future web language. So if you come up with a new language, make sure it is similar to Java but much easier, those web developers will then be able use it.”

My creator Brendan Eich was very depressed, but there was no other way. He had absolutely no interest in Java. As a result, he only spent 10 days on my design. By the way, my original name was LiveScript, but in order to cater to the “evil” Java, I was changed into JavaScript!

Because the time was too limited, some of the details were not rigorous enough. As a result, in a long period of time, the program produced by JavaScript was in total chaos. If the creator had foreseen that it would become the number one language on the Internet in the future, and that it would have thousands of learners around the world, would he spend a little more time?