Take the 2-minute tour ×  In ancient history, Brendan Eich had a
language design, and in today's world, JavaScript is a popular
language implemented and used in many different places.  What
caused the language to become popular? Was it the C-like syntax
familiar to previous programmers? Did Netscape have enough
control of the market to force it to be used? Or is there some
deeper reason that JavaScript is popular and other languages are
not?  Particularly, if you had to make a language as popular as
JavaScript, what initial conditions would you need to recreate
its growth in popularity?  share|improve this question
JavaScript was about dead (+- 2005) until Google resurrected it
with Google maps. –  Todd Moses Sep 16 '11 at 13:36 @ToddMoses I
went to argue, but some research showed you are right: AJAX made
Javascript mainstream again, inspired by Gmail (2004) and google
maps (2005). However (and this also relates to the above
question) javascript never really went away: Actionscript (used
in Flash) appeared fr