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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)

#221

Post by nicoburns »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #211
spyke112 wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you direct new comers attention to eval'esque functionality? They should stay far far away from it. Come to think of it, everyone should stay away from eval functionality!

Because students can understand "code being run every x seconds" easier than "reference to function being resolved then called every x seconds". Once they do, you show the problems with it and show why callbacks are better. When it comes to pedagogy, I'll use every trick I can. And I always win.

I feel like you could start with manually calling the function, and then introduce callbacks as a way to get your code to run in response to some event. A callback is no different to a regular function after all.

If your way works, then it works though I suppose.

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

#222

Post by airstrike »

wolco wrote: post #130
omegabravo wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was novel to release gmail at that scale in javascript. It hasn't been done before. 1Gb was a crazy size. Anybody remember gmail invites?

I actually got an invite from Google because I was on blogger.com back then (sad to admit it...)

I probably could have picked firstname@gmail.com were it not for the 6 letter minimum, so ended up with firstlast@gmail.com which still yields an absurd amount of messages meant to a variety of other recipients...

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

#223

Post by steego »

thedance wrote: post #156
steego wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

What did you need plugins for? Netscape and MSIE both were able to add a script tag to the DOM dynamically, and that was all you needed to build the rest of it.

You were able to use document.write somewhat dynamically, but the not reliably across all the browsers. Even if you did make an RPC call, there wasn't a lot you could do with it presentation wise because DHTML was two years away. (Even then, IE was the only one who had a decent implementation for a number of years after that.)

Plugins and applets filled a huge gap functionality wise.

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

#224

Post by steego »

mark-r wrote: post #155
steego wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I remember when Java first came out. It seemed like a new and improved C++ and I was intrigued. When it became clear that it was being positioned as purely an applet language I lost all interest. Then along came Javascript with its transparent attempt to ride the coattails of Java by adopting a similar name. No interest in that either.

You're right that Java was being promoted as a front-end language at first (Sun found a customer for Java), but I'm pretty sure the intent was to generate excitement by finding a killer app and then expand the market from there.

Also, Java applets and JavaScript were added to Netscape 2.0 at the same time and were meant to complement each other, not compete. It may seem like Java came first because JavaScript was called LiveScript for the first three months. I also don't think the JavaScript name change was intended to ride the coattails of Java, rather it was clarify and harmonize its relationship to Java.

I still look back and I'm amazed at how much stuff happened between the summer of '95 and winter '96. Windows 95 release. Netscape went public. 2.0 released 1 month later introducing Java and JavaScript, etc. etc. etc.

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

#225

Post by tabtab »

steego wrote: post #121
tabtab wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also thought Java was the future. But, Java tried to be an entire virtual OS, and gained too many security holes because of that. Flash had a similar fate. It's not that JavaScript solved that, it's that it's built into the browser such that you can't really skip it. Like the Java and Flash engine, a web browser is also a fat bloated leaky client. However, if you toss the first two, you are then dealing with 1 fat…

Do you think the security holes killed Java and Flash? Or do you think they were just nails in the coffin? I suspect performance and inconsistent experience killed Java applets and Sun stopped caring about desktop Java when they realized they can't make much money off it. Flash stuck around a lot longer than Java because it was fast, fun and ran consistently. It still lingered for some time after Jobs poisoned it. Ho…

Re: I also don't think average users cared about security issues back then.

Recommendations in common publications to remove them unless absolutely necessary coincided with their market share slide, as I remember it.

Yes, Java applets was imperfect, but generally got better on every release. It was improving about as fast as JavaScript + DOM + CSS + HTML was.

Re: For most people, if the computer tells them they need to update, they update.

It didn't help them in that they tried to trick you into installing extra junk apps during the update process, like tool bars (AKA spam bars) and "free" anti-virus scanners.

Java had a big issue with applications that needed older versions, but the older versions often had security holes. Oracle didn't manage backward compatibility well. Trying to be a virtual OS instead of just an app platform contributed to the too-much-complexity-to-manage problem for Oracle. KISS.

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

#226

Post by erikpukinskis »

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…

Transpiling sucks. It breaks debugging. The JavaScript community tolerates it but you can bet everyone who can avoid it will do so. We’re in the transpilation age, which does, as you indicate, provide an “in” for other languages.

But for me, JavaScript is not about having your dinner made just how you like it. It’s about targeting the lowest common denominator and keeping your code simple because of that.

I think that’s where JavaScript is headed in the limit. We’re at the low point for “just put a file in the browser, it’ll work!” But I guarantee you that style will come back in the next wave. You already see people going that way today. Casting off Babel and using much simpler packaging tools with code that’s natively readable in the most common browsers.

Would you package Rust for the JVM? Maybe. But it would not be fun.

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

#227

Post by erikpukinskis »

jackallis wrote: post #82

This obviously lends the question, given it's criticism back in the day, which PL is the next javascript?

Find a runtime environment that will ship on every major device this year. Any language that can (relatively) cleanly target that runtime could be the next JavaScript in 10 years.

But your question is equivalent to “what Nation could be the next United States”.

Possible serious answers to your question... which language might be on every device in 10 years... some successor to Solidity might Trojan horse it’s way in. If Facebook built a, like, a “Facebook Platform” or something like that, that could be on every device. Other than that, it’s hard to imagine.

JavaScript came from an era of global platforms. That’s over, now we’re in the era of fractured platforms. I don’t think we’ll see another global platform in a long time. It would need a major new selling point (like Solidity has) that can’t be replicated on existing platforms.

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

#228

Post by mark-r »

steego wrote: post #224
mark-r wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I remember when Java first came out. It seemed like a new and improved C++ and I was intrigued. When it became clear that it was being positioned as purely an applet language I lost all interest. Then along came Javascript with its transparent attempt to ride the coattails of Java by adopting a similar name. No interest in that either.

You're right that Java was being promoted as a front-end language at first (Sun found a customer for Java), but I'm pretty sure the intent was to generate excitement by finding a killer app and then expand the market from there. Also, Java applets and JavaScript were added to Netscape 2.0 at the same time and were meant to complement each other, not compete. It may seem like Java came first because JavaScript was cal…

Sorry, didn't mean to imply that my reaction was any kind of truth about the situation. I'm just recalling the thoughts I can remember from that time, hoping that they have some relevance.

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

#229

Post by danmg »

asveikau wrote: post #17
danmg wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was not well liked. The majority of webpages did not use it, or it was used very sparingly for things like form validation. Old versions of IE would have a dialog pop up if there was any kind of error during execution which happened frequently.

Not only that, for years afterwards the techie crowd and equivalent of places like HN (I suppose I am mostly talking about slashdot) had a lot of people saying it was bad, a nuisance, should be disabled in the browser, webpages should fail gracefully to non-JS content, etc. I don't know exactly when the tides turned on this attitude. In 2000 the above were not controversial opinions. By 2010 it was gone, and I saw pe…

It was two things around 2004-5: 1) people using GWT to make SPAs and 2) the ability to lazy load content through XMLHttpRequest.

GWT was essentially what typescript is today but java and it handled most of the nasty DOM related stuff and browser incompatibilities.

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

#230

Post by thedance »

steego wrote: post #223
thedance wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did you need plugins for? Netscape and MSIE both were able to add a script tag to the DOM dynamically, and that was all you needed to build the rest of it.

You were able to use document.write somewhat dynamically, but the not reliably across all the browsers. Even if you did make an RPC call, there wasn't a lot you could do with it presentation wise because DHTML was two years away. (Even then, IE was the only one who had a decent implementation for a number of years after that.) Plugins and applets filled a huge gap functionality wise.

You must have been before me. NN and MSIE 4 both had what we now call DOM Level 1, in 1997.
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