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by kazinator 2742 days ago
The story of how we got Javascript in browsers has absolutely nothing to do with "adoption".
1 comments

But there wasn't anything stopping early browsers from using a different scripting language. They stuck with javascript. Was that because it was a good language?

And what about Java, for example? And why don't people "flock" to LISP, say, or Haskell? Are those "bad" languages, now? And what about software, like windows- is windows widely used because it's a great operating system?

Adoption is a rotten bad measure of quality. Not just in programming languages- in everything.

> But there wasn't anything stopping early browsers from using a different scripting language.

You mean "nothing stopping the other browser, Microsoft Internet Explorer, from adopting Netscape's Javascript too".

Well yes. Don't the other browser vendors count as adopters?
agreed. after i learned common lisp and smalltalk, i realized that since there has hardly been any innovation in programming since the first languages half a century ago.