What stands out to me is how much more foresight they had than I'd thought about the ways JS would be used:<p>> With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response to user input. A multimedia weather forecast applet written in Java can be scripted by JavaScript to display appropriate images and sounds based on the current weather readings in a region. A server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a relational database and format it in HTML on the fly. A page might contain JavaScript scripts that run on both the client and the server.<p>We tend to think of JS as having started out as just a way to dynamically show/hide elements, maybe add an animation or two, on top of fundamentally HTML-based web pages. But I see here described what we now think of as "web apps", and even web <i>servers</i> (!) written in JS. They even talk about code-sharing on the front and back ends, a la React in hybrid-mode. I had no idea those things were in people's minds at its inception.<p>Edit: Apparently they already ran JS on the server! I had no idea<p>> Netscape LiveWire enables JavaScript programs to be installed, run and managed on Netscape servers
I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated.<p>> Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterprise networks or the Internet is virtually unlimited.<p>Was this level of integration ever achieved? Did Java applets actually have a JS API? Or is this just corporate double speak.
I bought a book, when I was about 12-15 years old, called DHTML (Dynamic HTML). It blew my mind to see things moving across the screen with just code.<p>Keep in mind that I learned pure html when I was 10, my websites were all very static (apart from a animated GIF here and there). The only way you could do a cool menu, effect or animation, was with Java Applet (which I learned after purchasing a online Java course that was taught over ICQ - it doesn't get more 90's than that).<p>I have this love relationship with javascript ever since I wrote my first "alert('hello')" and I wish it a happy birthday with many more years to come.
> JavaScript is analogous to Visual Basic in that it can be used by people with little or no programming experience to quickly construct complex applications.<p>>JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterprise networks or the Internet is virtually unlimited.<p>JS has come a long way in 25 years :-)
Reminds me of one of Microsoft's first Dynamic HTML demos:<p>There were two buttons, one labeled "Our Web Site", the other labeled "Our Competitor's Web Site".<p>When you moved the mouse over the "Our Competitor's Web Site" button, it would quickly slide out from under your cursor before you could click it!<p>Then when you stopped moving your mouse, the "Our Web Site" button would slyly slide right underneath your mouse!<p>Dammit Microsoft!!! ;)
I recall being at a local (Detroit) IT seminar around the time Javascript was announced, and some guy from Sun with an English accent going on and on about how safe javascript would be, since it couldn't access local resources and they had purposefully left out a lot of functions that could compromise the user. It's changed a bit since then, I'd say.
Nothing technically wrong with Java and JS of course, but this terrible PR piece which desperately tries to pitch Java as an integral part of the web, going even as far as naming an innocent scripting language for web browsers <i>JAVA</i>script truly demonstrates that the mid-to-end-90's were the dark age of computing (at least the corporate side).
> A server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a relational database and format it in HTML on the fly<p>I didn't know that server-side JS was a thing back then.
My first browser I was accustomed to using was Netscape on a Mac. Search engines were Hotbot and Webcrawler after Yahoo. Cannot recall the others.<p>When I think back IE browser was the top browser and there were all sorts of workarounds to get it html compliant (or rather IE compliant). Easy to learn html, but hard to get it working right. Then adding in javascript for the added dynamic flair.<p>I wanted to learn javascript & I ended up learning first java not knowing the difference at the time. Fun times were also spent at Barnes & Nobles / Borders (bookstore in U.S.) - checking out technical books and eventually I toiled through learning VBScript / Windows IIS to extend out a simple ecommerce site and possibly paving my way into the technical field.<p>Didn't Netscape also have email integration? I can't recall anymore as I went through multiple internet providers like Aol.
Not being on the web until the late 90s, the part I've never figured out is, what could you actually _do_ with JavaScript in the initial versions?<p>The way I understand it, early JavaScript could only address HTML forms, links, and images. Can't modify HTML tags. Can't insert new elements. Can't update the page and re-render until DHTML in the version 4 browsers. Can't query the network until XHR.<p>Ok, so now what?<p>Do you just pop up an alert() when someone types 4 digits for a Zip code instead of 5? Image rollovers? Is that it?
Javascript was such a misopportunity to use Scheme instead.<p>All three HTML, JS, and CSS could have used one Lisp-like dialect.<p>Also, I remembered that JS was horribly misunderstood for a long time because people weren’t used to the prototypical inheritance. And this is where jQuery comes in and took JS to the next level.
I wrote my first actually-doing-something lines of code back in 2001 in JS, because unlike e.g. Pascal, JS (or actually JScirpt) would just run and not ask stupid questions about types or missing semicolons and required only a browser.<p>12-year-old me was very happy with such a low barrier to entry language, especially given that I didn't have an internet connection until years later, so I had to learn mostly via trial and error.
> JavaScript is an easy-to-use object scripting language designed for creating live online applications that link together objects and resources on both clients and servers.<p>This one document certainly captures the state of the software industry before it was transformed by the Web (then Mobile then Cloud). The vision of JavaScript being both server-side and “isomorphic” is clearly articulated but it was a convoluted road getting there.<p>Let’s credit Google’s V8 and Node.js for making performant and concurrent/evented JavaScript ubiquitous. Netscape/Sun, Microsoft, and Sybase abandoned their server-side JavaScript efforts for Java/.net bytecode. Microsoft was the only relevant browser until Firefox rose from the flames like a phoenix. Linux and OSS software killed or maimed most of the companies mentioned.
I remember this, when the HTML chats didn't need to be manually refreshed anymore...<p>I still test with Netscape 2.0 out of respect, and some JS features work with it on my site.<p>The Web is just amazing, I can write across 25 years of platforms from a dozen different vendors, totally unrelated, and it works in all of them!
I remember being very excited about this announcement. I had been learning about Java, but I only had an HP workstation, which ran HP-UX Unix at work, and a Macintosh at home. Neither of them had a Java implementation yet, but I could run Netscape Navigator with JavaScript. I gave an enthusiastic talk on JavaScript at the next meeting of our local Java Users Group.<p>However, as I got to know the language better, my enthusiasm dwindled due to what I thought to be a strange type system. Also, I got access to Java implementations on HP-UX and Macintosh, so I never went back to JS. This has always limited my ability to do web front-ends, but now I'm looking to using Blazor for that.
Related - A project posted earlier today:<p>Mocha1995 - The world's first JavaScript engine written in 1995 by Brendan Eich, now compiled back to JS and WASM<p><a href="https://github.com/doodlewind/mocha1995/blob/main/blog/about.md" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/doodlewind/mocha1995/blob/main/blog/about...</a><p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300698" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300698</a>
I'm glad they added all the individual contact information at the bottom -- I'm going call up Mark Benioff at Oracle (415) 506-7000 to ask him how to download the source!
FYI the internet archive is currently having a 2-to-1 matching campaign.<p><a href="https://archive.org/donate/" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/donate/</a>
Think of how the web would be different if Microsoft leaned its monopoly power on XMLHttpRequest. Would it have been the test case for API ownership instead of Java?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XMLHttpRequest</a>
Hopefully a few years/decades from now, we will be remembering the day WebAssembly was announced. [1]<p>1: <a href="https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/150" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/WebAssembly/design/issues/150</a>
Not my fav announcement. This funny (I think) video shows why: <a href="https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat" rel="nofollow">https://www.destroyallsoftware.com/talks/wat</a><p>Disclaimer: I like types, I hate automatic casting.
I didn't realise JS only appeared in late '95.<p>I first used the web in early-mid '95; it must've been around April-May of that year.<p>I'm no JS-hater, but it's still nice to think I had a brief few months of script-free web use before the JS era dawned.
It doesn't have to be this way.<p>Hopefully Brython[0] which lets you do client-side Python scripting takes off.<p>Imagine doing full stack web dev without seeing a single line of JS.<p>[0] <a href="https://brython.info/" rel="nofollow">https://brython.info/</a>
> today announced JavaScript, an open, cross-platform object scripting language<p>Those words “open source” and “cross platform” are still in vogue today.<p>That’s just amazing for an industry that changes every year and in the land of JS every month.
it is interesting that the archive.org version of this press release has a semi-colon after AT&T;<p>i can't remember if in 1995 we would write the code to be AT&amp;T or if that came a bit later.<p>perhaps the scraper thought it was an HTML entity starting with the & followed by the T and it added the semi-colon.<p>or maybe it originally was posted in 1995 without the semi-colon and before it got indexed in 2002 by archive.org someone ran a regex style replacement on old static html files at netscape to "fix" html entities.<p>it just doesn't seem likely that a static html file from 1995 would have had AT&T; in it, it seems more likely that it was transformed either by the scraper or some internal script run after it was originally posted.<p>i found an old email version of the press release on Lunds University website that does not have the semi-colon. <a href="http://www2.ldc.lu.se/temadag95/javascript.txt" rel="nofollow">http://www2.ldc.lu.se/temadag95/javascript.txt</a><p>and what looks like an archive of the 1995 version of the java website hosted at University of Oviedo:
<a href="http://www6.uniovi.es/java-http/pr951204-03.html" rel="nofollow">http://www6.uniovi.es/java-http/pr951204-03.html</a>
OT: I recently learned C++ after doing JS/TS for years. This was an eye-opener because there were so many similarities which JS inherited from C/C++. Plus stuff I've seen in other languages and environments.<p>After this, I thought that everybody should learn C/C++ at school, it's like Latin to other languages (I learned Turbo Pascal at school and didn't like how it handled pointers and its overall elaborative style).
It is fun considering I was not yet born yet when this came out. Most all of the SW languages I use are older than I am... python, C++, Java, JS, perl, elisp.
I was just thinking the other day about how in late '95 I had just bought my first PC and was teaching myself web development and discovered JavaScript. I remember submitting bug reports to Sun. I hadn't realized until the other day, after calculating the timeline, just how new JavaScript really was at that point in time.
This is an important document, because it disproves the prevalent notion that Java and JavaScript have nothing to do with each other.<p>JavaScript has come a long way, to where the shame of any self-respecting engineer has been reduced to a bearable minimum!
Did no one see Marc Benioff from Oracle listed as the original point of contact for the consortium of sponsors? :)) (and some others that went on to become industry stalwarts).
in 1997 Iworked at the first firm that adopted XML<p>Was on a conf call with VPs from Sun, and i said, and I quote myself:<p>"So youre telling me that you have this shitty b2b system that youre not happy with and you want us to implement XML to accomodate"<p>and this VP was nixing it the whole time iwth "hand cut across the neck" manurisms...<p>later I hired Dave Sifry - and had his team implement a b2b FTP between us and sun...<p>I later went to him and stated " You should really make a linux support company"<p>Linuxcare was founded, worth unicorn.<p>I got nothing
I wish Matz had been there with Rubyscript. JS wasn’t as powerful back then; it took over a decade for it to evolve enough where people would really use it for much other than client-side validation and neat UI tricks. In comparison, Ruby was a great language to use, and it would’ve grown more quickly.
JavaScript is such a crappy programming language, that its only saving grace, is that people keep building other programming languages that transpiles down to it.<p>So now, you have a poor language, with another layer of a different programming language. Is it any surprise that the web is so slow these days, with all these indirections?
Such a sad day for an industry!<p>In a slightly different turn of events, web software ecosystem perhaps could be different from the pile of hacks on top of hacks it is now.
... and still looks like it hasn't aged a day in some ways.<p><a href="https://www.jwz.org/blog/2010/10/every-day-i-learn-something-new-and-stupid/" rel="nofollow">https://www.jwz.org/blog/2010/10/every-day-i-learn-something...</a>