JAVASCRIPT

Beginnings at Netscape

JavaScript was originally developed by Brendan Eich, while he was working for Netscape Communications Corporation. Indeed, while competing with Microsoft for user adoption of web technologies and platforms, Netscape considered their client-server offering a distributed OS with a portable version of Sun Microsystems' Java providing an environment in which applets could be run Because Java was a competitor of C++ and aimed at professional programmers, Netscape also wanted a lightweight interpreted language that would complement Java by appealing to nonprofessional programmers, like Microsoft's Visual Basic (see JavaScript and Java).

Although it was developed under the name Mocha, the language was officially called LiveScript when it first shipped in beta releases of Netscape Navigator 2.0 in September 1995, but it was renamed JavaScript. when it was deployed in the Netscape browser version 2.0B3.

The change of name from LiveScript to JavaScript roughly coincided with Netscape adding support for Java technology in its Netscape Navigator web browser. The final choice of name caused confusion, giving the impression that the language was a spin-off of the Java programming language, and the choice has been characterized as a marketing ploy by Netscape to give JavaScript the cachet of what was then the hot new web programming language.

There is a common misconception that the JavaScript language was influenced by an earlier web page scripting language developed by Nombas named C--, not to be confused with the later C-- created in 1997. Brendan Eich, however, had never heard of C-- before he created LiveScript.Nombas did pitch their embedded web page scripting to Netscape, though web page scripting was not a new concept, as shown by ViolaWWW. Nombas later switched to offering JavaScript instead of C-- in their ScriptEase product and was part of the TC39 group that standardized ECMAScript

Server-side JavaScript

Netscape introduced an implementation of the language for server-side scripting with Netscape Enterprise Server in December, 1995, soon after releasing JavaScript for browsers.Since the mid-2000s, there has been a resurgence of server-side JavaScript implementations, such as Node.js.

Adoption by Microsoft

Microsoft Windows script technologies including VBScript and JScript were released in 1996. JScript, a port of Netscape's JavaScript, was released on July 16, 1996 and was part of Internet Explorer 3, as well as being available server-side in Internet Information Server. IE3 also included Microsoft's first support for Cascading Style Sheets and various extensions to HTML, but in each case the implementation was noticeably different to that found in Netscape Navigator at the time. These differences made it difficult for designers and programmers to make a single website work well in both browsers leading to the use of 'best viewed in Netscape' and 'best viewed in Internet Explorer' logos that characterised these early years of the browser wars. JavaScript began to acquire a reputation for being one of the roadblocks to a cross-platform and standards-driven web. Some developers took on the difficult task of trying to make their sites work in both major browsers, but many could not afford the time. With the release of Internet Explorer 4, Microsoft introduced the concept of Dynamic HTML, but the differences in language implementations and the different and proprietary Document Object Models remained, and were obstacles to widespread take-up of JavaScript on the web.

Standardization

In November 1996, Netscape announced that it had submitted JavaScript to Ecma International for consideration as an industry standard, and subsequent work resulted in the standardized version named ECMAScript. In June 1997, Ecma International published the first edition of the ECMA-262 specification. In June 1998, some modifications were made to adapt it to the ISO/IEC-16262 standard, and the second edition was released. The third edition of ECMA-262 was published on December 1999.

Development of the fourth edition of the ECMAScript standard was never completed.The fifth edition was released in December 2009. The current edition of the ECMAScript standard is 6, released in June 2015.

Later developments

JavaScript has become one of the most popular programming languages on the Web. Initially, however, many professional programmers denigrated the language because its target audience consisted of Web authors and other such "amateurs", among other reasons.The advent of Ajax returned JavaScript to the spotlight and brought more professional programming attention. The result was a proliferation of comprehensive frameworks and libraries, improved JavaScript programming practices, and increased usage of JavaScript outside Web browsers, as seen by the proliferation of server-side JavaScript platforms.

In January 2009, the CommonJS project was founded with the goal of specifying a common standard library mainly for JavaScript development outside the browser.

With the rise of the single-page web app and JavaScript-heavy sites, it is increasingly being used as a compile target for source-to-source compilers from both dynamic languages and static languages. In particular, Emscripten and highly optimized JIT compilers, in tandem with asm.js that is friendly to AOT compilers like OdinMonkey, have enabled C and C++ programs to be compiled into JavaScript and execute at near-native speeds, causing JavaScript to be considered the "assembly language of the web", according to its creator and others.

javascript founder:

Brendan Eich

Brendan Eich (born 1961) is an American technologist and creator of the JavaScript programming language. He co-founded the Mozilla project, the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation, and served as the Mozilla Corporation's chief technical officer and briefly its chief executive officer.

Early life

Brendan Eich received his bachelor's degree in mathematics and computer science at Santa Clara University. He received his master's degree in 1985 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Eich started his career at Silicon Graphics, working for seven years on operating system and network code. He then worked for three years at MicroUnity Systems Engineering writing microkernel and DSP code, and doing the very first MIPS R4000 port of GCC.

Netscape and JavaScript

He started work at Netscape Communications Corporation in April 1995. Having originally joined intending to put Scheme "in the browser",Eich was instead commissioned to create a new language that resembled Java, JavaScript for the Netscape Navigator Web browser. The first version was completed in ten days in order to accommodate the Navigator 2.0 Beta release schedule, and was called Mocha, which was later renamed LiveScript in September 1995 and later JavaScript in the same month. Eich continued to oversee the development of SpiderMonkey, the specific implementation of JavaScript in Navigator, until 2011  

Mozilla

In early 1998, Eich co-founded the Mozilla project, with a website at mozilla.org, that was meant to manage open-source contributions to the Netscape source code. He served as Mozilla's chief architect.,AOL bought Netscape in 1999. After AOL shut down the Netscape browser unit in July 2003, Eich helped spin out the Mozilla Foundation. In August 2005, after serving as Lead Technologist and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Mozilla Foundation, Eich became CTO of the newly founded Mozilla Corporation, meant to be the Mozilla Foundation's for-profit arm.

On March 24, 2014, Eich was promoted to CEO of Mozilla Corporation. His appointment sparked controversy over a $1,000 political donation Eich had made in 2008 to the successful campaign for California Proposition 8, which sought to establish that, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This was criticized by gay rights activists on Twitter. In the ensuing public debate, OKCupid and two gay application developers called for a boycott of the company. Others at the Mozilla Corporation spoke out on their blogs in his favor. Board members wanted him to stay in the company with a different role.

On April 3, 2014, Eich stepped down as CEO and resigned from working at Mozilla. In his personal blog, Eich posted that "under the present circumstances, I cannot be an effective leader."

Following Eich's resignation, the National Organization for Marriage called for its own boycott of Mozilla, due to "gay activists who have forced him out of the company he has helped lead for years"