JavaScript

• Netscape codename Mocha
• LiveScript (September 1995)
• JavaScript™ (December 1995), with Sun
• Netscape SSJS
• JScript in IE3.0 (August 1996)
• JScript in IIS as well (1996)
  • cscript.exe
• ECMAScript (ECMA-262 Ed. 1) submitted November 1996, published June 1997
• ES2 (1998), ES3 (1999)
• JavaScript 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.8.5...

The Classics

Java applets

• Created by Sun in 1995
• Sun acquired by Oracle January 2010

<OBJECT
  classid="clsid:8AD9C840-044E-11D1-B3E9-00805F499D93"
  width="200" height="200">
  <PARAM name="code" value="Applet1.class">
</OBJECT>

The Classics

Microsoft ActiveX

1996

The Classics

Microsoft ActiveX

1996

• IE3.0 (August 1996)
• <OBJECT> automatically installs the control
• OLE in the browser (what could possibly go wrong?)
• No sandboxing. Are you sure?
• Are you sure??

The Classics

Adobe Flash

• Added to browsers around 1996
• ActionScript ("ECMAScript with Classes") in Flash 5
• Animations
• Sound boards
• Flash games
• YouTube & streaming video (.FLV)
• Saffron Type System
• 95% of desktop browsers (2011)

The "Classics" ???

Microsoft Silverlight

The Classics

Microsoft Silverlight

• Windows and OS X browsers since 2007
• .NET in the browser (what could possibly go wrong?)
• Heavy sandboxing
• Early: streaming media (Netflix, Beijing & Vancouver Olympics)
• Later: multimedia, graphics, animation
• 64% of desktop browsers (2011)
• (Flash: 95%, Java: 76%)
• Mono Moonlight (discontinued 2012)

CoffeeScript

• "It's just JavaScript"
• Open-source language from Jeremy Ashkenas
• Inspired by Ruby, Python, and Haskell
• Included in Rails 3.1
• coffee compiler written in CoffeeScript w/Jison
• Does not depend on Node
• Literate Coffeescript (.litcoffee)

Dart

So, I've thought for a long time, if I could take a clean sheet of paper and write a new language that retains all the goodness of JavaScript ... I would not have come up with anything like Dart.

Douglas Crockford

Dart

• Open-source language from Google
• Intended to replace JS
• dart2js transpiles to JS
• dart runs in command-line
• "Dartium" (Chromium+Dart VM) only working browser w/Dart
• Firefox, IE, Safari will probably never support it
• wat.

Dart

• Supports types, without requiring them
• Object-oriented
• Operators are methods
• "isolates" (cf. Erlang processes) for concurrency
• Code sharing with pub
• Neat .. cascade operator
• int is arbitrary size
• var c = 'String concatenation '"is just adjacency"
' (even over line breaks)';
• var s = 'string interpolation';
print("Dart has ${s.toUpperCase()}, which is handy.");

TypeScript

“Starts from JavaScript, Ends with JavaScript”

• Typed superset of JavaScript that compiles to plain JavaScript
• Open-source language from Microsoft
• Uses ES6 proposal for class-based object-oriented programming
• tsc written in TypeScript on CodePlex
• Optional & inferred type annotations
• Classes, interfaces, modules
• Ambient declarations declare types on existing JS code
• Obligatory arrow syntax x => Math.sin(x)
• Visual Studio, WebMatrix, emacs, vim, Sublime Text

Objective-J

• Part of the open-source Cappuccino framework from 280 North
• Traditional inheritance and Smalltalk-style message calls
• Superset of JavaScript
• Objective-J : JavaScript :: Objective-C : C

asm.js

"use asm"

NaCl (Google Native Client)

• Sandboxing x86(-64)/ARM code using fault isolation
• Brand-new Pepper Plugin API replaces NPAPI
• PNaCl: LLVM bytecode
• "Little black boxes in a webpage" breaks open web

Summary

altJS.org

“Web coding without JavaScript”

• Haxe JS target
• CoffeeScript derivatives
• C + JS = LLJS
• Security enforcement like Caja
• Synchronous to Asynchronous (CPS)
• Existing languages (Ruby, Python, Perl, Java, Scala, C#, Lisp, Haskell, Smalltalk, C/C++, BASIC, Pascal, Go, Logo, Lua, MIPS, Erlang, Rebol, SML)
• Tools for Compiler Writers