2w ago

In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that now runs the Internet

arstechnica.com In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that now runs the Internet

Thirty years later, JavaScript is the glue that holds the interactive web together, warts and all.

As someone who has been in Internet, e-commerce and the all around development of the web almost since its inception, this article makes me feel very, very old.

Technology @lemmy.zip

In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that now runs the Internet

arstechnica.com /gadgets/2025/12/in-1995-a-netscape-employee-wrote-a-hack-in-10-days-that-now-runs-the-internet/

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21 comments

Alternate title:
In 1995, a Netscape employee wrote a hack in 10 days that ruined the Internet
- And native software.
  Because JavaScript runs everywhere, we have companies creating "apps" and PC "programs" that are little more than glorified web views. There's normally nothing wrong with having shared code across implementations, but when that shared code is a 4 MB bundle of crap that creates 100s of MB in dictionaries and JIT compiler caches, you're ruining the end-user experience.
  
  100s of MB in dictionaries and JIT compiler caches
  Don't forget the hundreds of MBs of NPM dependencies
  
  To be fair this happen because developing in web app is much easier and cheaper sometimes more secure than having to learn some esoteric framework and language around it. That doesn't help with native software have limited UI framework in general compared to what we get with browsers.
- And, if I recall correctly, the other option besides rolling their own interpreter was to just use Scheme as the browser scripting language. Which would have been immeasurably better.

I know what you mean, buddy. I remember when Netscape navigator was a new and amazing piece of software. All I’d ever used before that was NCSA Mosaic.
- This is giving me flashbacks of waiting 10 minutes for a page to load
  But I also remember being able to hack in custom animations into that little box. There were some cool ones.
  
  That's me!
  
  My god that is nostalgic.
- New feature: the
  <IMG>
  tag
  
  Dude… I’ve used text-based internet. Long, long ago, when all you got was webpages in plain text.

I am obligated to comment on this due to my profile picture. 💜

I've started using raw JavaScript in all my projects. There's something about not relying on any libraries that makes it feel so much more powerful. The best AI models are very good at writing raw JavaScript, meaning you can easily create your own single page application structure. All I want are single page web applications using pure HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

you know what eich also did?
he funded/staffed/managed/supported another language into life
the language that's going to save computing for humanity
RUST
redemption arc complete
- Well he's also got some disagreeable political opinions, so I dunno about redemption.
  The success of Rust can be laid at the feet of many people, but critically Graydon Hoare — He wrote an article a couple years ago about his stewardship, and it's been something I go back to frequently. Just reading you get a sense of the immense intelligence, maturity, and sensitivity he possess, and imbued the project with.
  https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/307291.html
  
  Yeah, and Eich is the a***e behind brave....

oh shit i posted a funny comment but the bot thought it was malware so my request got blocked

21 comments