Eich: JavaScript will deliver on Java's broken promise

Eich believes JavaScript can be a 'virtual machine embedded everywhere that you can target code at'

OMG JavaScript
Flickr/Andy Piper




JavaScript has become the key language for Web programming, given its functionality in browsers. It is faring very well in language popularity indexes lately, though it trails Java.

StrongLoop's Bert Belder, involved in the development of the Node.js server-side JavaScript platform and its io.js fork, sees advantages to using JavaScript over Java. "In JavaScript, you could write a Web server in [five] lines of code. No way you could ever do that in Java," Belder said at the conference.

Currently, the ECMAScript specification underlying JavaScript is the subject of two upgrades under concurrent development, versions 6 and 7. Version 7 will include such features as async programming, and some new features are already being implemented in browsers. Developers are needed who want to use the new features and demand them from browser vendors, Eich said. He also stressed the importance of backward compatibility in JavaScript.