ECMAScript® 2025 Language Specification
tc39.es

I linked to the anchor where it says that, right to the bottom of the section 4.3. Will people just STOP saying JavaScript was ‘never intended’ to have ‘nothing to do with Java’? They clearly meant JavaScript to be to Java what AWK is to C, at least syntax-wise. I was born one year after JS was conceived (the standard says ‘invented’, invented my ass! Who ‘invents’ a language?) so I am too young to have been around in the early days of web. But it seems like people back then wanted Java to be lingua franca of web, a bit like PostScript in the thread I posted a few hours ago. They named it JavaScript to assure people that it’s the interpreted, scripting form of Java.

Now don’t say ‘JS and Java are like car and carpet’ you will look like an idiot.

Also if you are wondering why I am reading the standard, it serves two purposes. First is, I wanna implement it one day in the future. Second is, I know shit about web scripting and I wanted to make myself a blog and I miserably failed. So I am learning it.

I know nobody asked, but one person might be wondering why someone would do this to himself.

  • macniel@feddit.de
    22·
    4 months ago

    Who ‘invents’ a language?

    Linguists or Developers.

    They named it JavaScript to assure people that it’s the interpreted, scripting form of Java.

    Who are they? There was that one guy who developed JavaScript, and he decided on the name of JavaScript, not ECMA.

    Now don’t say ‘JS and Java are like car and carpet’ you will look like an idiot.

    JS and Java are like car and carpet.

    • SuperIce@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      4 months ago

      It wasn’t even called JavaScript originally, it was called Mocha. It was then renamed to LiveScript before its original release. Then, Netscape wanted a licensing agreement with Sun to integrate Java into Navigator, and part of the agreement was to rename LiveScript to JavaScript with Sun holding the trademark for JavaScript. They also talked a lot about using JS to modify the properties and behaviors of Java applets in the 1995 press release, but that never really happened.

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.world
      33·
      4 months ago

      There was that one guy who developed JavaScript

      Bullshit. AOL was a huge company with large development teams and lots of people worked on JavaScript. Obviously there was a project lead and in the beginning he did most of the work, but a project that big doesn’t get done by one person and by the end he would have been doing less than 1% of the work.

      he decided on the name of JavaScript

      The legal teams at AOL and Sun Microsystems negotiated JavaScript as part of a deal where AOL would “only” pay millions of dollars per month to license Java as long as they didn’t include any other programming languages in the browser. JavaScript wasn’t a separate language, we promise.