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ECMAScript
Someone described the sound of the word ECMAScript as something that sounds like a disease.
Probably the people in the organization who work hard and tirelessly to bring the best into the language would be sad.
Whatever it is, ECMAScript is JavaScript's cousin. They are family.
Every language is "thought of" by people.
What language elements should go in to this?
How will programmers use this?
How is this different from the other languages?
How will it operate?
What are the thought processes (the language paradigms) that people can have & use?
And so on.
It might be "thought of", by a single person or a group of people.
Some languages are conceived and implemented first.
People use it. They like it.
And then it becomes essential that a "Standard" is in place so that all language implementors have the same set of constructs and semantics.
Because, the users of a language are the "developers".
If things don't behave the same in various implementations, the developers can't use the same tool.
There is no trust.
There is difficulty of usage.
Constantly, the differences seem to take a bigger picture in the mind, than the similarities.
JavaScript was thought of with a very specific purpose.
Support builders of the then web pages and sites, with more dynamism.
And dynamic nature can only be programmed.
The tool built should be small and should have very basic constructs.
And then they say it was built in 10 days.
Like Noah's Ark.
Noah took 7, and Brendan Eich took 10.
It was to be a part of an already existing tool. The web browser.
It had to operate inside it.
So there were many constraints.
A person designing a language has to come up with something so simple that it is
First, easy to implement.
Second, easy to embed inside another tool.
The web browser provided the developers a context, to think of.
An environment.
Every environment brings its own concepts to the surface.
Anyway, this language tool and the power was introduced in to the then most popular browser,
NetScape Navigator.
As babies are named, so was the language.
Codenamed Mocha, it was named LiveScript.
But ultimately, with agreements between Netscape & Sun Microsystems, it was re-named to JavaScript.
And was introduced to the world.
Inside Netscape.
Netscape was licensed.
Observing its power, the then giant, Microsoft saw an opportunity in this market.
And it created competition.
By buying Spyglass and re-branding it as Internet Explorer.
The browser wars began.
Microsoft may have reverse-engineered the language capabilities and mimicked JavaScript.
And named it JScript.
Netscape sought to standardize the language.
This is the most important thing in the history of JavaScript.
Language Standardization.
They approached the standards body European Computer Manufacturer's Association (ECMA) and submit a proposal.
The standard body did not use either name JavaScript or JScript.
They understood that both of these were implementations.
This is the common understanding among the developers.
That Netscape created a proprietary language, Microsoft stole their idea and they rushed to a standards body.
But in all true honesty, Netscape had a vision from the start.
They introduced JavaScript to the world as an
Open, Cross-Platform, Object Scripting language
We can grasp their intentions from a press release dated December 4, 1995 (21 years to this day).
"Netscape and Sun plan to propose JavaScript to the W3 Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) as an open Internet scripting language standard. JavaScript will be an open, freely licensed proposed standard available to the entire Internet community. Existing Sun Java licensees will receive a license to JavaScript. In addition, Sun and Netscape intend to make a source code reference implementation of JavaScript available for royalty-free licensing, further encouraging its adoption as a standard in a wide variety of products."
Another press release that highlights this vision is :
https://web.archive.org/web/19981203070212/http://cgi.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease289.html
Anyhow, ECMA chose the name ECMAScript in the view of interests of both the parties.
They chalked out drafts and created a technical document.
This document was also given a number, Standard 262.
All standard documents have these kind of numbers associated with them.
Standardization has to be done by a committee of highly knowledgeable and qualified people.
Their experience is what matters.
Their insight is what enables the standard.
The standards body for America is American National Standards Institute - ANSI
IEEE has a standards committee and all the standards introduced by them can be found at http://standards.ieee.org/
The IETF seeks to standardize all things related to Internet and its architecture.
The body ECMA, though it started out in Europe is now an international organization. ECMA International.
Since it is just people, it is good to see them in person.
One can find all the beautiful faces of the past presidents at https://www.ecma-international.org/memento/history.htm
As JavaScript was nurtured by people, and interest developed among the masses and people learnt of its simplicity and its sophistication, people put more efforts to bring in elegance and clean features in to this standard.
The language standard continued to evolve with time and that manifested in editions of the standard.
Editions 3 and 5 being most prominent.
Today, people talk about ECMAScript. They write about it.
A once "disease-like" word, is now seen with reverence.
People who use the word ECMAScript or its short version ES are perceived as cool.
The most important thing we can learn from the history is by making keen observations.
- Language
- Language design
- Language paradigms
- Language execution
and
- Language implementation
- Language standardization
Other things are a matter of time.
Time shows the true value of these ideas.
Time and people.
People take time to understand something.
The "someone" who described the sound of the word "ECMAScript" as a skin disease is Brendan Eich himself.
His words can be found at in his reply to an email: https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2006-October/000133.html
"Some insist on using .es, but .es is not likely to become popular. ECMAScript was always an unwanted trade name that sounds like a skin disease."
It is also interesting that he observed that people might not adopt the letters "ES".
But quite the contrary, ES is now a part of the JavaScript developer's vocab.
Brendan Eich sends a welcome letter introducing the ES4 discussion list in
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/2006-June/003436.html
All ideas & words exchanged between the group can be found at the Mozilla ES discuss archives.
https://mail.mozilla.org/pipermail/es-discuss/
With Love, Sameeri
PS: In constant love & admiration of my friend JavaScript. With sincerest thanks to the continuous efforts of people, and their love for my friend.