Summary
ECMAScript is the official name of JavaScript, a language some consider to be the most widely-used programming language today. John Resig, author of the JQuery library, recently created a visual map showing just how pervasive JavaScript and its various dialects are.
Advertisement
While JavaScript started as a project at Netscape to enable programmability of the Web browser, the language has flourished in its decade-long existence far beyond browsers. Frequently a subject of criticism and ridicule, JavaScript found its way into products such as Photoshop, Adobe Acrobat and PDF, Flash, Flex, the HD DVD standard, every major Web browser, the JDK, Google's GWT, and is the basis of every Ajax application.
John Resig, author of JQuery, recently created a visual diagram illustrating the World of ECMAScript. He also lists eight different implementations of ECMAScript, sixteen ECMAScript engines implemented in six different languages, and many more applications that provide an ECMAScript execution environment.
While JavaScript has often been critiqued for its relative lack of language support for organizing large-scale JavaScript programs, it has become, for better or worse, a language that pervades a large part of the Web and desktop ecosystems.
What do you think of Resig's map of the World of ECMAScript?
Previous Topic
