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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)

#44

Post by xenomachina »

When JavaScript first came out, it couldn't do much. Aside from toys (eg: scrolling text in the status bar) the "serious" uses were mostly:

- (hopefully redundant) client-side validation - some styling (CSS was also brand new) - basic animation (eg: changing the on-hover appearance of stuff) - form "tweaking" (eg: disabling/hiding parts of a form dynamically based on other field values).

It wasn't really for writing apps in, just for adding small enhancements to apps that did their real work server-side.

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

#46

Post by cletus »

monocasa wrote: post #15
reflectiv wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And even then, gmail wasn't really written in javascript. They compiled Java down to JavaScript because JS itself was such a pain to deal with natively.

This is factually inaccurate. Gmail is and was always JavaScript. GWT had some successes (eg AdWords). Gmail wasn’t one of them.

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

#47

Post by cletus »

andykellr wrote: post #21
monocasa wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And even then, gmail wasn't really written in javascript. They compiled Java down to JavaScript because JS itself was such a pain to deal with natively.

Inbox was definitely written using GWT, as were other major google products, but not gmail as far as I know.

That’s not true. Inbox was written in Angular originally. Not sure what it evolved to but it was always JavaScript.

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

#48

Post by NeoBasilisk »

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's easy to forget, but for years after its introduction JavaScript didn't work well.

I haven't forgotten, and I will never forget.

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

#49

Post by NeoBasilisk »

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…

RIP progressive enhancement

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

#50

Post by interestica »

btilly wrote: post #34

JavaScript is a fascinating example of Microsoft successfully getting a giant own goal. The promise of the web was cross platform applications that required no installation. Microsoft's fear was that cross platform applications would make the operating system irrelevant and reduce Windows lock-in. Both Sun (with Java) and Netscape wanted Microsoft's worst fears to happen. This was the era of Embrace-Extend-Extinguish…

I've been listening to the podcast 'Cautionary Tales' about the unintended consequences of certain actions. This seems like it would fit well as a great story.
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