Day 0: Let there be light JavaScript
1990
So, there's this guy called Tim Berners-Lee that casually invents the World Wide Web.
This marks the beginning of the internet as we know it today and so on and so forth… but also earned him a ton of street cred.
Because of that you better call him Sir Tim Berners-Lee from now on!
Anyway, this invention allowed the transfer of text, images, and other content across a network using hyperlinks and browsers!
Speaking of browsers his research colleges truly let him cook!
So, Sir Tim Berners-Lee also dropped the first modern web browser around christmas the same year.
1991
But this is still nothing compared to the next years December, when the High Performance Computing Act, often referred to as the Gore Bill, was passed. Then senator Al Gore will later be hilariously misquoted as having "invented the Internet".
1992
Because Al Gore invented the internet, all the other tech-bros were real quiet in 92.
1993
Two of them, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, released the first mainstream web browser with a graphical user interface, called Mosaic. It was shit out quickly to release it faster… This will become a recurring theme later, trust me!
Because of its accessibility to non-technical people or beta males like you and me, it played a prominent role in the rapid growth of the early World Wide Web.
1994
They then went on to found the Netscape corporation, which released a more polished browser, called Netscape Navigator. This quickly became the most-used.
But web pages still lacked the capability for dynamic behavior after the page was loaded in the browser.
Which basically boils down to skill issues from Netscape…
However, in the meantime Microsoft starts developing Internet Explorer…
1995
To remain competitive, Netscape required a small scripting language that would act as "glue" to make web pages more dynamic.
At first, they turned to Java, which was an obvious mistake, they noted quickly, and then realized something more dynamic and approachable was needed.
So they hired this Brendan Eich guy and put him under insane pressure to shit out a prototype ASAP. Which I told you would become a recurring theme.
Ten days later, with the threat of Microsoft beating them to the punch, he created a language that has the syntax of Java, first-class functions like Scheme, dynamic types like Lisp, and prototypes like Self.
He named it: Mocha.
It is renamed to LiveScript for marketing reasons.
It is renamed to JavaScript for marketing reasons.
Soon after, Netscape 2.0 is released with support for JavaScript, which is primarily used for annoying pop-up windows…
Great job guys!
Who could have thought that, initially, JavaScript was not well-received?
Developers believed that the language was too basic, while designers found it too challenging.
However, JavaScript helped Netscape Navigator maintain its position as a market leader, for now.
1996
Shortly after, Microsoft reverse engineers JavaScript and launches Internet Explorer 3, but calls it JScript for marketing legal reasons.
JavaScript and JScript were noticeably different. This made it difficult for developers to make their websites work well in both browsers, leading to widespread use of "best viewed in Netscape" and "best viewed in Internet Explorer" logos for several years.
Later that year, Netscape submitted JavaScript to Ecma International. This led to the official release of the first ECMAScript language specification.
1997
ECMAScript 1 is standardized.
1998
ECMAScript 2 is standardized.
1999
ECMAScript 3 is standardized.
Act 1: Darkness
2000
ECMAScript 4 is standardized. Sike!
While ECMAScript 3 or ES3 for short, holds strong, the language’s development slows down as ECMAScript 4 struggles to gain traction due to differing opinions within the JavaScript community.
Additionally, the effort to fully standardize the language was undermined by none other than…
- Microsoft
- Microsoft or
- Microsoft
If you chose … Microsoft, you’re correct.
Then, Microsoft gained an increasingly dominant position in the browser market. By the early 2000s, Internet Explorer's market share reached 95%. Making JScript the standard on the Web.
Though, Microsoft initially participated in the standards process and implemented some proposals in its JScript ripoff i mean language, Microsoft eventually stopped collaborating on ECMA work. Why? It’s Microsoft you dummy… Thus ECMAScript 4 was omitted forever.
And to make things even worse. On March 10, 2000, the unthinkable happened: The dot-com boom crashed.
2001
The industry was shattered.
2002
The industry was shattered.
2003
The industry was shattered.
2004
The industry was no longer shattered.
And, the successor of Netscape, Mozilla, released the Firefox browser, thank god. Firefox was well received by many, taking significant market share from Internet Explorer, finally!
2005
Meanwhile, very important developments were occurring in open-source communities not affiliated with ECMA work. Jesse James Garrett released a white paper in which he coined the term Ajax (short for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML). He described a set of technologies, of which JavaScript was the backbone, to create web applications where data can be loaded in the background, avoiding the need for full page reloads. This sparked a new period of JavaScript, spearheaded by open-source libraries and the communities that formed around them.
2006
One of them is JQuery created by John Resig. The library addresses extremely-frustrating issues related to cross-browser compatibility that existed at the time. To this day, it remains the most widely used JavaScript library in terms of actual page loads.
2007
Mozilla joined ECMA International, and work started on the ECMAScript for XML (or E4X) standard. This led to Mozilla working jointly with Macromedia (later acquired by Adobe Systems), who were implementing E4X in their ActionScript 3 language, which was based on an ECMAScript 4 draft. The goal became standardizing ActionScript 3 as the new ECMAScript 4. To this end, Adobe Systems released the Tamarin implementation as an open source project. However, Tamarin and ActionScript 3 were too different from established client-side scripting, and without cooperation from Microsoft, duhhh, ECMAScript 4 never reached fruition.
2008
Google debutes its Chrome browser, with its open-source high-performance V8 JavaScript engine that was faster than its competition.
The key innovation was just-in-time compilation (or JIT for short), so other browser vendors needed to overhaul their engines for JIT as well.
By the way Just-in-time compilation is a technique where the browser translates code into machine language only when it's needed, instead of doing it all at once before running. This makes the browser faster because it can run code more efficiently, instead of waiting for everything to be prepared in advance.
Additionally, all of the disparate parties came together for an ECMAScript conference in Oslo. This conference will lead to the most important agreement in JavaScript’s young history.
Act 2: Renaissance
2009
The parties agreed to combine all relevant work and continue the development of the language. Thus, ECMAScript 5 was released, exactly 10 years, or one Fortune 500 software development cycle, after ES3. ES5 quickly became one of the most supported versions of JavaScript. It was fully supported by Firefox, followed by Chrome, Safari, and even Internet Explorer.
Additionally, the creation of Node.js by Ryan Dahl sparked a significant increase in the usage of JavaScript outside of web browsers. Node.js uses Google's V8 engine, thereby providing a stand-alone JavaScript runtime system.
2010
Both AngularJS and Backbone frameworks see their initial releases. They become extremely popular, but for different reasons - Angular was declarative and opinionated, while backbone was imperative and minimal. This marks the beginning of the modern single page application.
2011
ES5.1 is released.
2012
Nothing new is released, but you could release a click on my YouTube channel's subscribe button!
2013
Facebook releases ReactJS. Dozens of other frontend, backend, and fullstack frameworks emerge roughly around this time period, like Ember, Vue, Meteor, Sails, Svelte, Mithril, Knockout, Polymer, just to name a few. At this point in time, everything was about to change for the better…
Act 3: Modernity
2014
JavaScript was gradually evolving into the language we are familiar with today.
2015
It took seven years, or one Microsoft development cycle, to move from the finalized version of ECMAScript 5 to the launch of ECMAScript 6, initially named Harmony, and later renamed as ECMA2015. This version was drastically different from the previous one, and it remains the most significant update to JavaScript.
2016
Full support for ES6 in Chrome, Opera, and Safari.
2017
Full support for ES6 in Firefox and Edge.
2018
Full support for ES6 in all browsers except the now obsolete Internet Explorer…
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