Deconstructing the JavaScript creation myth

To be fair to Brendan Eich, he probably could not have foreseen callback hell in 1995.

We are about a year away from celebrating the 25th anniversary of JavaScript. The story goes that young Brendan Eich created JavaScript in just ten days back in May of 1995.

God created the world in six days, and then He rested on the seventh day. That Eich created JavaScript in ten days is still amazing and impressive, and it may even be technically true, but it is misleading to say it that way.

Now JavaScript is ubiquitous on the Web, doing everything from sophisticated renderings of 3-dimensional objects to basic website interactions we take for granted.

For example, in online forums that allow you to upvote or downvote other users’ comments, you take it for granted that you can’t upvote or downvote your own comments. There’s usually some kind of script that prevents that.

JavaScript was originally called Mocha. Then it was called LiveScript, before it was decided it would be called JavaScript for the first release of Netscape Navigator that supported it.

The following year, Microsoft responded with VBScript, which was based on Microsoft Visual Basic. But, as a lot of you are probably already aware of, aside from a few superficial details, JavaScript is not really based on Java.