What was Eich thinking?

• Brendan Eich thought JavaScript should be easy to access

"Brainstorming how the JavaScript should be right there in the page that was important for him to say that because I thought so too" (Fridman, Lex. “Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave: Lex Fridman Podcast #160.” YouTube, 12 Feb. 2021.).

"The answer was that two languages were required to serve the two mostly-disjoint audiences in the programming ziggurat who most deserved dedicated programming languages: the component authors, who wrote in C++ or (we hoped) Java; and the “scripters”, amateur or pro, who would write code directly embedded in HTML." (Popularity, Brendan Eich).

"JavaScript was just a little snippet you could write, you could copy somebody else’s, you could learn as you went. You didn’t have to learn the whole language to use it and you could buy it by the yard."  (Infoworld, Eich, and Krill).

• Branden Eich had a unique mindset.

  • Believed the web should be collaborative 

  • Didn't hold any grudge against anyone who stole his work, seeing it as "innovation".

"Brendan Eich saw time as of the essence and a bird in the hand worth many hypotheticals in bushes; and so he prototyped the first Mocha"(JavaScript: The First 20 Years, Allen Wirfs-Brock and Brendan Eich).