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No, I did original JS ("Mocha") in ten days.

The joke in those slides was how I went from my before-Netscape health (the picture of me doing a back handspring was from 1993; I joined Netscape in April 1995) to the after-those-ten-days-in-May-1995 state (looking like Ash from Evil Dead 3, with chainsaw for hand).

From 1992 to 1995 I worked for MicroUnity. No JavaScript there! It was not even a gleam in my eye, although I did write a language processor for editing MPEG-2 streams.

So I indeed created JS in a mad rush to get it into Netscape 2, along with other things Netscape tried as part of a platform play against Microsoft.

If I had not rushed, I would have missed not only Netscape 2, but also Netscape 3. Netscape 3 was supposed to be version 2.1, a minor release, until a company Netscape had acquired was given the browser and screwed up their release schedule so badly that it slipped into 1997 and became Netscape 4.

In 1998 or even 1997 it would have been too late to ship JS and have it make a de-facto standard. MS had already shipped VBScript as a me-too, and if they did not have JS to imitate, it would have been even more Microsoftian.

VBScript was the alternative to the JS rush job, in my settled view. I don't write this out of pride, joy, or defensiveness. I simply think it's the likeliest alternative outcome.

(Updated to correct Netscape 4 date per http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape_Communicator to June 1997. It was so buggy that a series of firedrill releases were required to get it into barely usable shape by '98, which is what burned that year into my memory.)



Wanted - Fullstack VBScript developers You have: Delivered a fully functioning single page application Using Vanilla VBS. Delivered high performance backends with ASP(using VBScript) Advantage - you've used Angular.vbs and Backbone.vbs, and are familiar with react.vbs

Talk about dystopian alternative universes.




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