In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that now runs the Internet

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/12/in-1995-a-netscape-employee-wrote-a-hack-in-10-days-that-now-runs-the-internet/

37•taubek•2h ago

Comments

nabla9•1h ago

Brendan Eich wanted the language be some dialect of Lisp language but his superiors insisted on a language similar to Java. So he wrote that prototype in Common Lisp. It's basically Java like syntax over Common Lisp structs and vectors.

wk_end•1h ago

The original implementation of JS was in C, not CL.

I think Eich was more partial to Scheme than CL, as a model for JS. Though I wouldn’t say it’s Java syntax over either - the scoping rules are very distinct, it’s missing tons of features core to either CL or Scheme, there’s the whole Self-inspired prototype-based OOP layer…

LeFantome•26m ago

I also always thought that he set out or implement a Scheme-like language but got told to make it look like Java.

Scheme is a LISP of course, just not Common Lisp.

I have no idea what language the original implementation was in but it makes sense it would be the same as the rest of the browser.

convolvatron•16m ago

I went to a talk by Eich in the late 90s. He explicitly mentioned scheme

cxr•1h ago

Two oversights in this article:

- Failure to mention Netscape Enterprise Server (NodeJS is not responsible for expanding "the language's scope[…] far beyond the browser"—it was on the server from almost the very beginning; the author cites Brendan's 2011 blog post[1] which namechecks Rhino, but then leaves this out)

- Failure to mention JS running on the James Webb Space Telescope (Brendan's post also namechecks Nombas, but doesn't go into much detail about it; Brent Noorda covered this in an update to the Nombas section of his site[2] in 2022)

1. <https://brendaneich.com/2011/06/>

2. <https://brent-noorda.com/nombas/us/index.htm>

petesergeant•1h ago

I think the first JavaScript book I bought, circa 1998(?) briefly mentioned server-side JavaScript, and then until Node came out, I never saw it again. It's fair to say Node took server-side JavaScript from an obscure curiosity to the behemoth it is now.

ChrisArchitect•1h ago

[dupe] Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46146406

t1234s•48m ago

Still have this in my bookmarks file:

http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2000/javascript/...

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