Foreword
As is well known at this point, I created JavaScript in ten days in May 1995, under duress and conflicting management imperatives—“make it look like Java,” “make it easy for beginners,” “make it control almost everything in the Netscape browser.”
Apart from getting two big things right (first-class functions, object prototypes), my solution to the challenging requirements and crazy-short schedule was to make JavaScript extremely malleable from the start. I knew developers would have to “patch” the first few versions to fix bugs, and pioneer better approaches than what I had cobbled together in the way of built-in libraries. Where many languages restrict mutability so that, for example, built-in objects cannot be revised or extended at ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Read now
Unlock full access