Recently, Channel 9 was invited to attend the great SPLASH conference. What is SPLASH? Systems, Programming, Languages and Applications: Software for Humanity. SPLASH is an annual conference that embraces all aspects of software construction and delivery, and that joins all factions of programming technologies. Since 2010 SPLASH is the umbrella for OOPSLA and Onward!. This year it features a third technical track, Wavefront, designed to publish innovative work closely related to advanced development and production software. SPLASH takes on the notable track record of OOPSLA as a premier forum for software innovation, while broadening the scope of the conference into new topics beyond objects and new forms of contributions. [source=SPLASHcon.org]



A big thanks to the SPLASH event organizers for inviting me and my camera to the event to engage some key computer scientists and engineers in geeky fun conversation! SPLASH is a great event! I learned a ton and met many amazing computer scientists and students.



Here, we meet Brendan Eich, the creator of JavaScript and currently the CTO of the Mozilla Foundation. JavaScript is a very interesting language (it's general purpose, dynamic, quasi-functional, object oriented) and one that is widely used on the web (in fact, no other language comes close, really). Brendan wrote the first version of JavaScript to support both novice and advanced users (quite the challenge - but he pulled it off!). JavaScript is also widely used today as a compiler (or "transpiler") target, where JavaScript plays the role of a web assembly language.



Today, JavaScript has matured into much more than a scripting language and is used in ways that Brendan never imagined (from Node.js to h264 video decoding to "Windows 8" Metro style applications...). In this conversation, we don't spend much time at all on the past. You can read all about that on Brendan's blog. Instead, we focus on the JavaScript of today and tomorrow. Thanks for spending time with Channel 9, Brendan!



Table of contents (courtesy of https://channel9.msdn.com/Niners/George_Curelet_Balan)

[00:50] Javascript as a mature evolving language (ref to Harmony agenda)

[01:30] reference to the module system

[02:00] Eich comments on Javascript improvements looking more like java

[03:38] Javascript as web assembly

[05:00] Javascript is still a language for beginners as it evolves? Eich: the language should not grow too large

[06:03] a pattern tells you that there is a bug in the programming language

[06:18] ref to growing the language exemplified with English language single syllable words

[06:50] impact of removing Javascript bad parts

[08:20] Javascript as a functional language

[09:15] adding types to the language

[10:05] Javascript will never have mandatory types

[10:40] Comments about the Dart language

[11:40] Javascript as a compile target

[13:15] Dart as a warning language

[14:00] Javascript as the most popular language. Since Javascript runs the web (that has so many good parts) it is hard to replace it with something else. Javascript should evolve.