The history and creation of JavaScript

Beginning development in 1995 from a Netscape Communications developer, Brendan Eich began work on a new language that would be a predecessor of Java and other in-demand languages of that time. Javascript was birthed from a competitive need for a company to learn to leverage the web and dominate the market. JavaScript’s sole purpose of creation was to allow companies use of a scripting language for client AND server side functionality (in current day with Node) all wrapped in one pretty little bow. JavaScript almost began as a trend for programmers and faded until it was adopted to deal with a market demand for a more “serious” web and the tool began being used in its intended way. Allowing many other transferable programming skills to be implemented, it let developers manipulate DOM elements with ease and truly communicate functionality with events and interactive functionality to the user. JavaScript also has a close relationship with the creation of ECMA which is essentially a committee of developers that existed to refine and understand the growing needs and demands of a quickly changing internet at the time. ECMAScript languages were those monitored by the European Computer Manufacturers Association or ECMA. The specifications and demands for JavaScript, almost like the building code for those constructing and maintaining housing, was referred to as ECMA-262 and that was one of the first times it had ever been revises until version 4 of JavaScript where no agreements could be currently made about the language and what features it should contain. This limbo position for JavaScript in the programming world lasted for a long time, until 2005 when Ajax included JavaScript as a compatible language and it caused the professional world a lot of excitement that applications could now make calls for information much more easily. After the announcement of Ajax, many developers took to their computers to begin developing external tools for JavaScript called libraries. Many libraries were created at the time but the most namely was JQuery, a JavaScript library that allows developers to more seamlessly target and manipulate DOM elements. Since then, many other technologies have been developed to use JavaScript in interesting ways, React is used to manipulate JSON and the view layer of the page JavaScript is being used on. Mobile apps are now also being developed using other notable frameworks such as Angular and applications that would once be thought of as incredibly complicated are now possible to be developed by even a single developer.