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What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

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Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#161

Post by city41 »

omegabravo wrote: post #122
airstrike wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outlook Web Access is absolute horseshit compared to OG gmail. Sure, it was JS-driven, but it wasn't good . The apps you mentioned had nowhere near the impact that Gmail had in terms of showing what was possible

GMail had a massive impact, but I didn't really think it was novel from a technical JS perspective. It was really basic, and loaded fast. It had excellent fast search and very good junk mail rejection. Most email providers had approximately 100Mb mailbox limit (I can't remember specifically), but Gmail had 1Gb.

To me it was Maps in 2005 that really showcased what JS could do.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#162

Post by AgentME »

tabtab wrote: post #51
aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

Re: It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. And STILL doesn't, at least for anything non-trivial. New browser brands or version often "break" a lot of libraries and code. It's not really JS's fault: HTML wasn't meant to be emulate real desktops, and shoehorning it to do so has made a giant tangled multi-layer mess. Browser standards should be split into three focus areas…

>New browser brands or version often "break" a lot of libraries and code.

When has it happened that browsers have broken standardized features? Browsers have gone through large lengths to stay backwards compatible. It's hard for me to think of things that have been broken besides nonstandardized stuff (like plugins, or things that only worked in one browser to begin with like IE).

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#163

Post by thdrdt »

aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

This is why you could charge a lot of money for rollover effects (most of the time image swapping).

JavaScript was hard.

I remember writing complex graphic applications in Director. But I think it took at least 10 years before the same was possible in JavaScript.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#164

Post by trustfundbaby »

lowercased wrote: post #123
chc wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think many people knew about Oddpost, whatever it was, so it seems a bit suspect to say it influenced a lot of developers' perceptions of JavaScript.

As someone who was doing web development at that time (since '96 actually), oddpost did have an impact on perception of JS and what was possible among developers. Yahoo buying them was kind of a big deal at the time, and every developer I knew who was involved in web stuff had seen it or at least heard about it. The biggest drawback at the time was that it was window/IE only, and when gmail was released, google made…

Never heard of oddpost, and pretty sure most devs at the time had never either. I do remember Gmail really being a wow moment with respect to Javascript and specifically AJAX though.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#165

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

For me the most interesting part of the article is how virtually all the influential companies being quoted have disappeared. America Online, Architex (who?), Computer Associates (haven't heard that one in a while), DEC, HP (still around but a shadow of its former self), Iconovex (?), Illustra (?), Informix (acquired by IBM), Macromedia (eaten by Adobe), Metrowerks (?), SCO, SGI, Sybase, ...

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#166

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

Domenic_S wrote: post #147
SoylentOrange wrote: post #76

The article conflates “popular” with “loved”. JS is popular because it’s the only* language in which it’s possible to write browser apps and extensions. The number of people using transpilers for this purpose is minimal. In actual fact, most people try to avoid JS whenever possible, instead using TS or other languages that compile down to JS. Saying people love JavaScript because it’s the most popular is like saying…

> is like saying people love McDonald’s because it sells the most burgers Ok I give up, why is this wrong?

The 101 is the busiest freeway in the Valley, but I doubt many people love it...

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#167

Post by NicoJuicy »

reflectiv wrote: post #10
aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

Complex javascript apps just weren't a thing...hell, it took google writing Gmail (2004) to really show everyone that a large SPA using javascript was even possible. After Gmail...things really started to move in the javascript world...people started to put effort into both the runtimes and the libraries.

Gmail was user friendly, but that's it.

I think the v8-runtime changed a lot for Javascript, although it was already normal to use then

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#168

Post by Domenic_S »

9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #166
Domenic_S wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is like saying people love McDonald’s because it sells the most burgers Ok I give up, why is this wrong?

The 101 is the busiest freeway in the Valley, but I doubt many people love it...

Sure, but there's not 20 equally filling and cheap freeways within walking distance of the 101

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#169

Post by tasogare »

steego wrote: post #111
skinnymuch wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Should Microsoft get credit for inventing Ajax and having the first real world functioning example of it?

They do deserve some credit for intentionally introducing that feature to the browser as a standard feature, but the notion of fetching data without reloading the page wasn't novel at all. That's what Java applets and plugins were for. I'm also pretty sure they weren't the first to fetch data from the server without reloading, because people were doing all sorts of novel things in the mid-90s with plugins. The reason…

> The browsers were still implementing the basic features

And they are still doing it. CSS Grid is not even 3 years old.

Re: What people in tech had to say about JavaScript when it debuted in 1995 (2017)

#170

Post by dvfjsdhgfv »

aazaa wrote: post #5

The release of JavaScript was deeply confusing to me as a developer back then. Java applets and Macromedia Flash were already touted by their vendors as the one true way forward for interactivity. The scripting language released at about the same time seemed like an oddball. It's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well. It was extremely slow, limiting the complexity of what co…

> It didn't run outside of the browser, so how dare you call yourself a developer if you were using it?

That's not exactly accurate, you could actually do some server-side things with it and I knew people who did it (late 90s, early 00s) - although I never understood why and the company went bankrupt in the end.

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