Explore the origin and evolution of the JavaScript language from Netscape to modern ECMAScript.
Understanding the history of JavaScript provides essential context for why the language is the way it is today. Created in just 10 days in 1995 by Brendan Eich at Netscape, it was initially named Mocha, then LiveScript, and finally JavaScript to capitalize on the popularity of Java, though the two are fundamentally different. Its primary goal was to bring interactivity to web pages, a task previously impossible with static HTML. To avoid fragmentation and ensure compatibility across different browsers, JavaScript was submitted to ECMA International for standardization, leading to the first ECMAScript specification (ES1) in 1997. This standardization process has been pivotal. While major updates were slow for nearly a decade after ES3, the release of ES5 in 2009 brought significant improvements like strict mode, JSON support, and new array methods. However, the most transformative update was ES6 (ECMAScript 2015), which introduced a massive overhaul with features like `let`/`const`, arrow functions, classes, and promises. Since then, new ECMAScript versions are released annually, adding iterative improvements and keeping the language modern and powerful. This evolution reflects the changing demands of web and server-side development.