At O’Reilly’s Velocity 2011 event last week Douglas Crockford took the spotlight, letting developers know why JavaScript is the most popular language. Speaking about the background and uses of the language, the debates over its use and the future of the web, Crockford was easily the talk of the show.
Starting the event, Crockford asked rhetorically, “Anyone heard of JavaScript? Turns out it’s the world’s most popular language. It’s an amalgam of features from several other languages – from Java it gets its lousy syntax, from Scheme it gets functions as first class objects – the best idea in the history of programming languages – and from Self it gets prototypal inheritance – the other greatest idea.”
He went on to say that by focusing too much on benchmarks, developers have been encouraged to use faulty programming practices. The goal should be to encourage good practices through the development of a new benchmark, rather than the other way around.