Friday
Room 1 - Level 3
16:20 - 17:20
(UTC±00)
Talk (60 min)
How JavaScript Happened: A Short History of Programming Languages
JavaScript was famously created in 10 days as a proof-of-concept for Netscape Navigator 2.0. Today it is one of the most-used languages in the world. Some people even like it. In this talk we will chart the path from the dark days before programming languages, through the ups and downs of the early pioneers, all the way to 1995 and the creation of JavaScript.
We will meet the giants on whose shoulders Brendan Eich stood, and speculate about what they might think of modern JavaScript. You will learn interesting things about language design (good and bad), computer internals (weird), and committees (just bad). You’ll see FizzBuzz implemented at least a dozen times. It’ll be fun.
Emmz Rendle
Rendle is the CTO of XRAI, on a mission to subtitle and translate real life using AI and mixed reality. When it comes to programming they are obsessed with maximizing performance and minimizing complexity. When it comes to speaking, they combine 40 years experience in tech with skills acquired as a professional stand-up comic in the 90s to deliver entertaining and informative talks at conferences around the world. They recently learned to play bass so they could join tech parody band The LineBreakers and promptly became obsessed with that, too.