How JavaScript Happened: A Short History of Programming Languages - Mark Rendle - NDC London 2024

This talk was recorded at NDC London in London, England. #ndclondon #ndcconferences #developer #softwaredeveloper

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#javascript #programminglanguage #programming

JavaScript was famously created in 10 days as a proof-of-concept for Netscape Navigator 2.0. Today it is one of the most-used languages in the world. Some people even like it. In this talk we will chart the path from the dark days before programming languages, through the ups and downs of the early pioneers, all the way to 1995 and the creation of JavaScript.

We will meet the giants on whose shoulders Brendan Eich stood, and speculate about what they might think of modern JavaScript. You will learn interesting things about language design (good and bad), computer internals (weird), and committees (just bad). You’ll see FizzBuzz implemented at least a dozen times. It’ll be fun.

[TechTalksWeekly]

I could listen to Mark for hours and never get bored!
This talk was so good it's been featured in the latest Tech Talks Weekly issue 🎉
Congrats!

[Oglokoog]

This man's an absolute pleasure to listen to!

[CEOofCulturalMarxism]

8:40 Colossus was not turing complete, ENIAC was (expect, technically for the fact that it had limited memory), if Colossus counts as general porpuse then the german Zuse Z3 should be considered the first computer, as it was build earlier, however it was not really turing complete either.

[paulmoore]

First unix was in pdp11 assembler. Then they built C. Multics was in fact quite successful. Large amount of the US dept of defense ran off Multics systems for decades. Many conceps on modern systems came from multics (ring protection, privilege levels..)

[McSecular]

Thank you much, Mark. I learn something every time I watch a talk of yours!!!

[garyduell]

I laugh at the idea of monitors matching print sizes. Hey look at the A3 monitor I got. I think A2 is too big and A4 was so last decade.

[sundhaug]

IIRC part of the reason they made Simula is that they were having problems simulating ship-behavior in water where parameters of one ship would affect the other - so you might have a small sailing-ship with some properties from that huge tanker you were simulating last week

[viccie]

58:04 My brother did a PhD in Civil Engineering and defended his thesis last year. His main way of developing dyke simulations he built was in FORTRAN and in ran on a Super computer to crunch the numbers. Very cool but also pretty weird

[roo]

It was the Poles, mathematicians not technicians, who built the bombe.

[faldarith]

TIL the old weird flashy lights are the equivalent of modern RGB leds

[guai]

how js happened: let's take all the untested language design concepts in one place and make it a worldwide standard, what can go wrong?

[vsenderov]

Before Eniac there was ABC (first fully electronic computer) and before Colossus there was Konrad Zuze's machine (first electromechanical computer)

[justafriend]

49:40
Looks like a valid fizzbuzz regex to me.

[justafriend]

I vote for the nullpointerexception to be renamed to ALGONE...

[RoamingAdhocrat]

Eli is that you in the audience there? 😄

[knbqfme]

So happy the guy from IT Crowd got out of the it support basement, even if his accent had to change.

[edgeeffect]

Are any Fortran jokes good jokes?
That truly awful pre Fortran-77 Fortran filled me with childhood nostalgia.... and abject horror.

[pookiepats]

Good grief ANOTHER history of Javascript 😂

tell me you didn’t want to do this talk without telling me you didn’t want to do this talk.

Copy pasta monsta

[SRG-Learn-Code]

>>> And how can we prevent it from happening again...

That quote is misleading. Sure there are things that it could have done better... I mean, a lot of things.
But at the same time... it is what runs the world.
Is a little bit like spreadsheets. You can love them or hate them, but they are key in lots of industries.