> JavaScript is a scripting language and therefore much easier to use.
There are already scripting languages available. Why not just use something like Tcl which is lightweight and easily embeddable? Why re-invent the wheel?
Some history can be found at least here [1] and [2]. Based on that, the original idea was to build something that was based on Scheme. Then Sun came to the picture. They already had Java and there was pressure to have something that looked like Java. Story was that you would Java for the big stuff and Javascript for more light-weight client-side tasks.
That (marketing) worked out pretty well. At least for me it took years to figure out what kind of language Javascript really was. Seeing jQuery for the first time was kind of revelation.
> There are already scripting languages available. Why not just use something like Tcl which is lightweight and easily embeddable? Why re-invent the wheel?
This just begs the question: why are there already multiple scripting languages available.
And this further begs the question: why are people still "re-inventing" the wheel by building new languages?
"There was once a dream that was Rome. You could only whisper it. Anything more than a whisper and it would vanish, it was so fragile. And I fear that it will not survive the winter."
Anyone arguing that you can't use words to mean what they obviously mean and that everyone takes them to mean, but instead must only use them to refer to obscure logical fallacies is clearly nuts and should be ignored.
> At the same time, I intend to use the phrase correctly in the future!
These kinds of dual usages come up pretty often, but in that spectrum I find this one very interesting because it is somehow very good at scratching some sort of intellectual/elitist itch in all of us. Both usages are fine, but one is more rare (but not too rare) and "came first" so is ostensibly more "correct." Which makes it very satisfying to bring up in these kinds of conversations :-)
There is great synergy in having the two complementary language using (almost) the same syntax. E.g. Both use ‘this’ to refer to the current object, ‘new’ to create a new object, ‘==‘ to compare values, both use the same Date library which is throughly tested and future proof, both have wrappers to turn primitives into objects etc.
Surely this will avoid a lot of mistakes when switcing between the two languages.
Wow, that’s exciting! Maybe I’m being too optimistic, but does this mean we’ll soon be able to write single pieces of code that can execute on both client- and server-side?
It sounds like pure Java will get us part of the way there thanks to applets – which are also supported in Netscape 2.0 – but JavaScript gives much more control of the whole page. I played with it in an early beta when it was called LiveScript and wrote a crossword puzzle that didn’t need to reload the page at all. Amazing! Now if I can write the backend part in Java and have it work the same way…
I can’t wait for the Java and JavaScript syntaxes to unite and make web page development simpler. Netscape and Sun HQs are just a handful of miles apart, so come on folks, don’t drag it out! Could we get this before the end of the year?
If they had to chose an existing scripting language, surely Perl would be the obvious choice? Perl is designed after how humans think, where other languages force you to think like a computer.
There are already scripting languages available. Why not just use something like Tcl which is lightweight and easily embeddable? Why re-invent the wheel?