Some kind of scripting language was necessary, I don’t think JavaScript had to be it.
First there was C++: bloated, complicated, and not memory safe. So they came up with Java, which was similar in syntax but much less complicated, with great memory safety, and a decent type / object system. It was popular in the day, with a cultish fan base, and was seen as cool. So they (meaning Netscape) wrote something that looked like Java but got rid of half the good features. Nobody thought at the time that JS mattered much, it would be soon replaced by something better.
And that was decades ago. It was never meant to run the web for that long. It did an acceptable job, but it is very frustrating in the long run.
The problem with Java applets was the slow startup time of the VM. JavaScript loaded quickly and executed immediately.
The real dominance of JavaScript started after Flash died. Starting with the iPhone, the booming smartphone didn’t support Flash. Websites needed to migrate away from depending on Browser Plugins. The only option was JavaScript. Microsoft Silverlight, Java Applets, Flash, Shockwave were all Plugins. Mobile Browsers don’t support plugins because of performance, security, and usability issues. Users of all of these platforms switched to JavaScript for lack of a better option. The introduction of electron and other JavaScript powered applications on the desktop is a long term consequence of that transition. The death of the browser plug-in had severe consequences.
JavaScript started out as a cut down Smalltalk clone because the dev thought that Smalltalk was cool. Then they bolted a curly braces syntax onto it and called it JavaScript for marketing reasons.
The big alternative was Microsoft’s VBScript, based on Visual Basic and not available on any browser other than Internet Explorer.
We’re arguably better off with JS in the browser. Of course server-side JS is a spectacularly bad idea.
It’s a pretty core aspect of the web, I think it’s necessary, but it was taken too far.
Some kind of scripting language was necessary, I don’t think JavaScript had to be it.
First there was C++: bloated, complicated, and not memory safe. So they came up with Java, which was similar in syntax but much less complicated, with great memory safety, and a decent type / object system. It was popular in the day, with a cultish fan base, and was seen as cool. So they (meaning Netscape) wrote something that looked like Java but got rid of half the good features. Nobody thought at the time that JS mattered much, it would be soon replaced by something better.
And that was decades ago. It was never meant to run the web for that long. It did an acceptable job, but it is very frustrating in the long run.
The problem with Java applets was the slow startup time of the VM. JavaScript loaded quickly and executed immediately.
The real dominance of JavaScript started after Flash died. Starting with the iPhone, the booming smartphone didn’t support Flash. Websites needed to migrate away from depending on Browser Plugins. The only option was JavaScript. Microsoft Silverlight, Java Applets, Flash, Shockwave were all Plugins. Mobile Browsers don’t support plugins because of performance, security, and usability issues. Users of all of these platforms switched to JavaScript for lack of a better option. The introduction of electron and other JavaScript powered applications on the desktop is a long term consequence of that transition. The death of the browser plug-in had severe consequences.
JavaScript started out as a cut down Smalltalk clone because the dev thought that Smalltalk was cool. Then they bolted a curly braces syntax onto it and called it JavaScript for marketing reasons.
The big alternative was Microsoft’s VBScript, based on Visual Basic and not available on any browser other than Internet Explorer.
We’re arguably better off with JS in the browser. Of course server-side JS is a spectacularly bad idea.