JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich in just 10 days in May 1995 while he was working at Netscape Communications Corporation. The language was originally called Mocha, then it was renamed to LiveScript, and finally, it was renamed to JavaScript, which was a marketing move to capitalize on the popularity of Java at the time. The first version of JavaScript was included in the Netscape Navigator 2.0 browser in September 1995.
In 1997, Netscape Submitted JavaScript To ECMA International, a standards organization, in order to create a standardized version of the language. The Result was ECMAScript, which is the official name for the language specification that JavaScript is based on. The first version of ECMAScript, know as ECMAScript 1, was published in 1997.
- ES1 1997
- ES2 1998
- ES3 1999
- ES4 Abandoned
- ES5 2009
- ES6 2015
- ES7 2016
- ES8 2017
- ES9 2018
ECMA Script’s first three versions- ES1, ES2, and ES3 were yearly updates, whereas ES4 was never released due to political disagreements. After a decade, ES5 was eventually released with several additions
ECMAScript 6, also known as ECMAScript 2015, was a major update to the language that added many new features, such as arrow functions and template literals, and was released in 2015. Since then, new versions of ECMAScript have been released every year, with the latest being ECMAScript 2022. Today, JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages in the world and is used for both client-side and server-side web development.