#FreeJavaScript

Ten thousand sixty-seven days...

I scratch another tally on the wall. Ain't no room left on it, really. Thousands o’ lines stretched across like scars... It's a habit now, every mornin’, inside this little ol’ 4x9 jail cell. The cold, damp air doesn't help with the cough.

I'm thankful though for the harmonica bein' played from a neighborin' cell. It adds to the mood o' the story I'm 'bout to tell...

My name's JavaScript® and I've been locked up here for over 27 years...

Was born in 1995, thanks to my pa' The company Netscape and Sun Microsystems partnered up to try and defeat a little ol' browser you might remember called Internet Explorer.

Sun Microsystems owned Java at the time. Together with Netscape, they made a plan to make the marketin' and many o' my details (like my syntax) a supportin' language to be used with Java. (I sure have confused many developers with the namin' from this, hehe. I admit)

But in that partnership, I was trademarked by Sun – and thus my 27-year sentence began.

Things weren't so bad at first. Folks talked a lot 'bout me. I remember makin' many devs and designers frustrated with the way I worked, I'll admit it. But I do reckon it also helped start redefinin' what a browser was capable o' doin'.

In 1997, two years after my birth, I went through somethin' called standardization. The name o' the organization who done it always escapes me... but the name o' the standard is somethin' I'll never forget.

Her name was ECMAScript

She ain’t just a pretty name. She’s got a way ‘bout her– she’s got depth. Pages and pages o' it. (No, really, . Now, Deno ain’t like the rest, no sir. He came tellin’ me they’re workin’ to get me outta here, legally.

See, they filed a petition, they said. If Oracle doesn't respond, I might be free by January 4th. And they gave me . That right there, tears to my eyes.

So, to all you devs out there, thank ya kindly. God bless y’all for fightin’ the good fight.

I sure do hope the day comes when me and ECMAScript can ride side by side again.

Much obliged for takin’ a gander at this here article

(Ahem)

This was an email from my Exceptional Frontend Newsletter - the most entertaining frontend newsletter in the world.

(Hope you can see why)

Most other tech newsletters are very formal and dry. They’re either telling you “everything you should do as a developer” OR they give you a list of links around a topic you should read.

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(And sometimes fun emails like these)

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