Question

JavaScript was introduced in 1995 as a way to add programs to web pages in the Netscape Navigator browser. The language has since been adopted by all other major graphical web browsers. It has made modern web applications possible—applications with which you can interact directly, without doing a page reload for every action. But it is also used in more traditional websites to provide various forms of interactivity and cleverness.

It is important to note that JavaScript has almost nothing to do with the programming language named Java. The similar name was inspired by marketing considerations, rather than good judgment. When JavaScript was being introduced, the Java language was being heavily marketed and was gaining popularity. Someone thought it was a good idea to try to ride along on this success. Now we are stuck with the name.

After its adoption outside of Netscape, a standard document was written to describe the way the JavaScript language should work to make sure the various pieces of software that claimed to support JavaScript were actually talking about the same language. This is called the ECMAScript standard, after the Ecma International organization that did the standardization. In practice, the terms ECMAScript and JavaScript can be used interchangeably—they are two names for the same language.

There are those who will say terrible things about the JavaScript language. Many of these things are true. When I was required to write something in JavaScript for the first time, I quickly came to despise it. It would accept almost anything I typed but interpret it in a way that was completely different from what I meant. This had a lot to do with the fact that I did not have a clue what I was doing, of course, but there is a real issue here: JavaScript is ridiculously liberal in what it allows. The idea behind this design was that it would make programming in JavaScript easier for beginners. In actuality, it mostly makes finding problems in your programs harder because the system will not point them out to you.

This flexibility also has its advantages, though. It leaves space for a lot of techniques that are impossible in more rigid languages, and as you will see (for example in Chapter 10 ) it can be used to overcome some of JavaScript’s shortcomings. After learning the language properly and working with it for a while, I have learned to actually like JavaScript.

There have been several versions of JavaScript. ECMAScript version 3 was the widely supported version in the time of JavaScript’s ascent to dominance, roughly between 2000 and 2010. During this time, work was underway on an ambitious version 4, which planned a number of radical improvements and extensions to the language. Changing a living, widely used language in such a radical way turned out to be politically difficult, and work on the version 4 was abandoned in 2008, leading to the much less ambitious version 5 coming out in 2009. We’re now at the point where all major browsers support version 5, which is the language version that this book will be focusing on. A version 6 is in the process of being finalized, and some browsers are starting to support new features from this version.

Web browsers are not the only platforms on which JavaScript is used. Some databases, such as MongoDB and CouchDB, use JavaScript as their scripting and query language. Several platforms for desktop and server programming, most notably the Node.js project (the subject of Chapter 20 ) are providing a powerful environment for programming JavaScript outside of the browser.

This is a book about getting computers to do what you want them to do. Computers are about as common as screwdrivers today, but they contain a lot more hidden complexity and thus are harder to operate and understand. To many, they remain alien, slightly threatening things.