Brief History

A Brief History of JavaScript

JavaScript was created in just 10 days by Brendan Eich at Netscape in 1995. Originally called Mocha, then LiveScript, it landed on "JavaScript" as a marketing play to ride Java's popularity. The name stuck, but the two languages are very different.

In 1997, ECMA International standardized the language as ECMAScript. The early years (ES3 in 1999) were stable, then came a long gap. The real revolution started with ES6 (ES2015), which transformed JavaScript into a modern programming language.

The Early Days

var greeting = "Hello from 1995!";
alert(greeting);

Function Expressions (ES3 era)

var double = function(x) {
  return x * 2;
};
console.log(double(5));

JSON Arrives (ES5, 2009)

var person = JSON.parse('{"name":"Alice","age":30}');
console.log(person.name);

Arrow Functions (ES6, 2015)

const double = x => x * 2;
console.log(double(5));

Classes (ES6)

class Animal {
  constructor(name) {
    this.name = name;
  }
  speak() {
    console.log(this.name + " makes a sound.");
  }
}
const dog = new Animal("Rex");
dog.speak();

Modern JavaScript (ES2020+)

const user = { name: "Alice", age: 30 };
console.log(user?.address?.city ?? "Unknown");

Optional chaining and nullish coalescing — JavaScript keeps evolving.