341–350 of 476 posts
I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > 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 enterpris…
What stands out to me is how much more foresight they had than I'd thought about the ways JS would be used: > 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 c…
Philip Greenspun has a great review of Netscape LiveWire from the time. https://philip.greenspun.com/wtr/livewire.html You can see that the current JavaScript tooling complains are nothing new under the sun: So what used to be a few keystrokes in Emacs or Netscape Gold now requires three steps: edit the .html file recompile the .web file restart the LiveWire app from the appmgr
"This approach has several disadvantages, the first of which is speed. You are gratuitously transporting potentially many kilobytes of data back and forth across the network."
Javascript was such a misopportunity to use Scheme instead. All three HTML, JS, and CSS could have used one Lisp-like dialect. 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.
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This is all semantics, but the idea was that Java is a "real" language for serious use and JavaScript is a "script" that's much easier to use and doesn't involve all the complications of a "real" programming language. It was only kind of true back then, and not even remotely true now. There really isn't a solid line you can draw between a "script" and a "programming language". To me, something like Python is right in…
I feel like "requires compilation" is a good first order differentiator. And "has a somewhat sane type system" is another.
I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > 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 enterpris…
This also helped with their LiveConnect stuff which allowed the two to talk to each other. I think it was a huge selling point that the languages felt similar, and felt comfortable to those who already knew C and/or C++.
In those days I was doing a lot of pasting from one language to the other, and editing "int" into "var" etc. Java and JavaScript were similar in that, compared to C and C++, you just sort of forgot about pointers and pointer syntax. (even though they still sort of existed).
They sure seemed to me to be related. This is obviously most true for light use of the languages (JavaScript especially was designed for very light use)
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This is all semantics, but the idea was that Java is a "real" language for serious use and JavaScript is a "script" that's much easier to use and doesn't involve all the complications of a "real" programming language. It was only kind of true back then, and not even remotely true now. There really isn't a solid line you can draw between a "script" and a "programming language". To me, something like Python is right in…
To me, if something acts logically like it is run from top to bottom, it's a scripting language. Python scripts and JavaScript are in this category; Java isn't. Additionally, explicit compilation/linking/assembly shouldn't be required for a scripting language, even if the interpreter does stuff kind of like this behind the scenes for performance.
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No. JavaScript was a web language for web developers to be able to automate forms, etc, client-side. AFAIK, originally it was never intended to run on the JVM server-side like Groovy does. Netscape did try to position server-side JavaScript as part of its Enterprise Server package though, but it was not JVM-based. But the environment was proprietary and not compelling enough for a myriad of reasons. It ran server Jav…
> No. JavaScript was a web language for web developers to be able to automate forms, etc, client-side. AFAIK, originally it was never intended to run on the JVM server-side like Groovy does. Sure, but that's not an argument against JavaScript having potentially been a planned part of the JVM ecosystem (or, at least, a language playing a role in the JVM ecosystem, without itself being hosted on the JVM, instead maybe…
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It's also probably incorrect; DHTML didn't involve loading data via AJAX after the page loaded, but instead configuring the webpage on the client side after loading it. That said, ask them if they'd prefer the backend in PHP or Coldfusion.
1999 saw the release of XMLHttpRequest as an ActiveX control for IE 5. There certainly were IE-focused developers still referring to most of what they were doing as DHTML and yet doing the earliest AJAX stuff, back when the X still made sense that it stood for XML and XMLHttpRequest was the first and at the time only AJAX tool available in a web developer's toolbelt.
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Why "script" though? Aren't Java and JavaScript both script(ing languages)? Why not call it e-Java or Java XYZ or something?
This is all semantics, but the idea was that Java is a "real" language for serious use and JavaScript is a "script" that's much easier to use and doesn't involve all the complications of a "real" programming language. It was only kind of true back then, and not even remotely true now. There really isn't a solid line you can draw between a "script" and a "programming language". To me, something like Python is right in…
I think it's easier to draw the line if you have the requirements right. That's not the line that was being drawn. it was scripting vs compiled languages. It was very clear then which sides Java and Javascript fell on. There are some weird cases now like compiling scripts into different scripts, but in general it's pretty clear, and Python is definitely a scripting language.