Locknote: How JavaScript Happened: A Short History of Programming Languages - Mark Rendle

NDC Oslo 2023 Locknote
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.

[Daysra]

A sentence that starts with "so we're gonna..." is at 39:37

[georgeti]

35:55 - If they invented a "Formula Translator" now, they would call it "AI"

[georgeti]

Very interesting. And excellently presented!

[nyrtzi]

Oh, there's Perlis also on the list of Algol's parents. Perlis the dude who said: "There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works."

[OldieBugger]

One of my first programs was in MC, Zilog 80 MC. I had the list of Machine Codes at the back of Sinclair Spectrum manual. It didn't have any instructions, apart from the assembly opcodes. But that was enough. Yay!

[grauekatze]

I'm very far from this industry but I watch Mark's and Dylan's talks anyway.

[eclecticaaronbentley]

You imply that the reason curly braces weren't available at first for some BCPL users was because ASCII was 7-bit. But in fact, curly braces were added to ASCII the same year BCPL came out, and ASCII remains 7-bit to this day.

[OldieBugger]

When I was a kid, my mother worked to enter data to the University computer, on punch cards. She brought us kids a ton of those cards with a typo (or some other error) in them. I always will remember "FORTRAN STATEMENT" from those.

[gbeziuk]

Not to undervalue Smalltalk's role in the history of programming languages, the concept of anonymous functions was probably already there when LISP came out. Maybe not quite spelled out loud back then, though.

[jalvrus]

I have to wonder what we'd all be complaining about if the browser language had remained Scheme. Actually, I have to wonder if it would have been as widely accepted if it had remained Scheme. C and C++ ruled at that point; Lisp, not so much. Having a C-style syntax made it that that much easier for people to adopt.

[OldieBugger]

I have used goto pretty often, even when studying CompSci, even when I was told never to use it. But I had very justified reasons to use goto. Like from inside deeply nested for's / if's to the end of a function, like goto end; Or something similar. Why not just return? Often there was some memory management to do at the end of a function, etc. Besides, it's a cleaner way to write: goto end; than just return in the middle of a function.

[agnarrenolen]

I believe the THINK Class Library had Exception handling in C before C++ had it natively. I would still preffer the simplicity of TCL-exceptions, which simply was implemented using Macroes.

[GeorgeTsiros]

43:30 that doesn't answer why _fortran_ chose to use _I_, _J_, _K_ for integers. In mathematics, it was already common to use _i_ when an _index_ was needed, such as summation. You write a Σ and under it you put _i=1_ and over it you put _n_ or _k_ . Just google "summation" and look at the images, or just go to wikipedia and look there.

[jayamustika]

What does it meant at the time machine bit, that he talk to Brandon Eich to please put the integer into Javascript?

[Knirin]

What font is he using for the quotations?

[patricknelson]

I don’t know what everyone’s saying… the talk _both_ begins _and_ ends. I know, because I just watched it.

[lesfreresdelaquote]

Talking about Lisp and Backus and not mentioning Alonzo Church even once is quite the crime. First Backus was a student of Church and second Lambda Calculus was as much as important in the history of programming as Turing's machine was. Actually, Turing even wrote an article to show how the two approaches were equivalent. One of the most important result of the 30s in the sense that if your functional program can be equivalent to a Turing's machine, then _you can run it on a regular computer_

[ukyoize]

I wish html documents were not interactive

[GeorgeTsiros]

lord byron of syphilis and hanging out with shelly... not lord byron who gave up all that he had and went to help the greeks, no. Not lord byron the poet, no.
that was a dick move, rendle.

[OldieBugger]

I never used FORTRAN, why? Because the first example FORTRAN program from the textbook crashed. After that I threw the book to trash bin and I swore never ever to use FORTRAN ever. And I never had to.