I actually think that people should rather use EcmaScript name instead of JavaScript, because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway). I wish Oracle started suing people to force everyone to use the better name.
I am going to sound crazy, but, if Microsoft would free up TypeScript and every browser added native TypeScript features to JavaScript… and then we all just started calling it TypeScript. Maybe? Then you would see native ts files. Oracle will never give up JS. The funny thing is the number of people who confuse Java and JS.
From experience, corporations usually don't give the general public any trademarked name. I assume TypeScript is trademarked right now; and I doubt Microsoft would ever liberate this. So in this regard, the corporations act in the same manner - selfish.
If browser makers offered to put it in the browser if the name is freed, I bet they could be convinced. The main problem right now, is that there isn't a major push to add TS to the browser.
The way I'm proposing it, technically it would be to make JS and TS kind of the same thing, but not fully, as someone else mentioned the goal of TS is still to tell the user (developer) about issues before the code runs. However, if done right TS files still get interpreted like normal JS, and technically you would want to compile them and not put them in the browser "raw" but you could still call it TS.
> because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway).
Probably if we were in the early 2000s this could have been a battle worth fighting. But considering we're in 2025 and probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point, even when you're deep in enterprise-land, I'm not sure it'd be less confusing.
Anyways, you're about two decades too late to this discussion :/
Aside from the "Java is cool, name everything Java" in the early days - there was scripting between the browser and the applet using a language named JavaScript.
> probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point
All the same, I probably get as many calls from recruiters to fill Java positions as I do JS positions. I've never used the former, and explaining it is always awkward!
To be frank this is a service to you. No company you want to work at has a recruiter that doesn't understand the difference (a fully AI recruiter would be better than this experience).
> 1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.
The irony is I belive the JavaScript creator wtnted to latch to Java's popularity to called it JavaScript and now both Java and JavaScript are owned by Oracle and they want the name but not want to change is to ECMAScript, it's real official name.
If you read the original JavaScript press release ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020808041248/http://wp.netscap... ), it's mainly intended as a language to write glue code so Java applets (where the real application logic would go) can interact with a webpage:
> With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response to user input. A multimedia weather forecast applet written in Java can be scripted by JavaScript to display appropriate images and sounds based on the current weather readings in a region. A server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a relational database and format it in HTML on the fly. A page might contain JavaScript scripts that run on both the client and the server. On the server, the scripts might dynamically compose and format HTML content based on user preferences stored in a relational database, and on the client, the scripts would glue together an assortment of Java applets and HTML form elements into a live interactive user interface for specifying a net-wide search for information.
> "Programmers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Java because it was designed from the ground up for the Internet. JavaScript is a natural fit, since it's also designed for the Internet and Unicode-based worldwide use," said Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research at Sun. "JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect HTML-based content to Java applets."
This was all actually implemented. JavaScript functions could call Java applet methods and vice versa (see https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deplo... ). Of course over time everyone abandoned applets because of all the security problems, and JavaScript became a good enough language to write application logic directly in it. Still, there's more meaning behind the name than it just being a cynical marketing move.
I had a flash ad take 100% of my cpu back around 2005 or so. It wasn’t even trying to be malicious, just a poorly made ad. That was the day I stopped allowing any site exceptions in my ad blocker.
Of course 100% of that cpu is probably 1/10 of one core on any of my modern machines, so an ordinary and not-broken ad laden page routinely eats several times as many cycles now. Progress!
The story is somewhat more complicated than that and not amenable to a simple summary, because there are multiple entities with multiple motivations involved. Keeping it simple, the reason why the press release babbles about that is that that is corporate Netscape talking at the height of the Java throat-forcing era. Those of you who were not around for it have no equivalent experience for how Java was being marketed back then because no language since then has been backed by such a marketing budget, but Java was being crammed down our throats whether you like it or not. Not entirely unlike AI is today, only programmers were being even more targeted and could have been seeing more inflation-adjusted-dollar-per-person spend since the set of people being targeted is so much smaller than AI's "everyone in the world" target.
This cramming did not have any regard for whether Java was a good solution for a given problem, or indeed whether the Java of that era could solve the problem at all. It did not matter. Java was Good. Good was Java. Java was the Future. Java was the Entire Future. Get on board or get left behind. It was made all the more infuriating for the fact that the Java of this time period was not very good at all; terrible startup, terrible performance, absolutely shitty support for anything we take for granted nowadays like GUIs or basic data structure libraries, garbage APIs shoved out the door as quickly as possible so they could check the bullet point that "yes, java did that" as quickly as possible, like Java's copy-of-a-copy of the C++ streaming (which are themselves widely considered a terrible idea and an antipattern today!).
I'm not even saying this because I'm emotional or angry about it or hate Java today. Java today is only syntactically similar to Java in the 90s. It hardly resembles it in any other way. Despite the emotional tone of some of what I'm saying, I mean this as descriptive. Things really were getting shoveled out the door with a minimum of design and no real-world testing so that the Java that they were spending so much marketing money on could be said that yes! It connected to this database! Yes! It speaks XML! Yes! It has a cross-platform GUI! These things all barely work as long as you don't subject them to a stiff breeze, but the bullet point is checked!
The original plan was for Java to simply be the browser language, because that's what the suits wanted, because probably that's what the suits were being paid to want. Anyone can look around today and see that that is not a great match for a browser language, and a scripting language was a better idea especially for the browser in the beginning. However, the suits did not care.
The engineers did, and they were able to sneak a scripting language into the browser by virtue of putting "Java" in the name, which was enough to fool the suits. If my previous emotional text still has not impressed upon you the nature of this time, consider what this indicates from a post-modern analysis perspective. Look at Java. Look at Javascript. Observe their differences. Observe how one strains to even draw any similarities between them beyond the basics you get from being a computer language. Yet simply slapping the word "Java" on the language was enough to get the suits to not ask any more questions until much, much later. That's how crazy the Java push was at the time... you could slip an entirely different scripting language in under the cover of the incredible propaganda for Java.
So while the press release will say that it was intended to glue Java applets, because that's what the suits needed to hear at that point, it really wasn't the case and frankly it was never even all that great at it. Turns out bridging the world between Java and Javascript is actually pretty difficult; in 2025 we pay the requisite memory and CPU costs without so much as blinking but in an era of 32 or 64 MEGAbyte RAM profiles it was nowhere near as casual. The reality is that what Javascript was intended to be by the actual people who created it and essentially snuck it in under the noses of the suits is exactly what it is today: The browser scripting language. I think you also had some problems like we still have today with WASM trying to move larger things back and forth between the environments, only much, much more so.
We all wish it had more than a week to cook before being shoved out the door itself, but it was still immensely more successful than Java ever could have been.
(Finally, despite my repeated use of the term "suits", I'm not a radical anti-business hippie hacker type. I understand where my paycheck comes from. I'm not intrinsically against "business people". I use the term perjoratively even so. The dotcom era was full of bullshit and they earned that perjorative fair and square.)
"Now" makes it sound like this is a recent acquisition of the JavaScript trademark. Oracle obtained it in 2009 as a result of the Sun purchase and if I remember correctly, Sun initially was issued the trademark back in the 90s sometimes.
Oracle is in the business of bullying others using their big legal dept.
We all know this.
> Oracle has no business claiming javascript as a trademark.
You think so. That's okay. But ultimately it is up to a judge to decide. Right?
I agree with the EcmaScript. Just ditch the stupid name. Get all the petition signers to agree an move on. Fuck Oracle. Fuck JavaScript (it's nothing like Java anyway).
> But ultimately it is up to a judge to decide. Right?
I think we are getting a rude awakening about what is legal versus what is actually right are not always the same thing. There are some the horrible, horrible things here and the laws need updating, as opposed to us simply saying this is for a judge to decide and there is nothing else we can do.
I am ok with ditching the JavaScript name. I understand this cuts the problem entirely. However, there are other problems we have that we can't bypass so easily.
We need copyright terms to be much reduced. We need CFAA fully repealed and not replaced by anything. We need to abolish software patents. There is a lot we need to do that will likely take a century to accomplish and that's likely being too optimistic.
What we can't do is leave everything up to the judges because clearly even if we get a favorable ruling today, the precedent can be removed by another stroke of a pen.
> I think we are getting a rude awakening about what is legal versus what is actually right are not always the same thing.
I'm not sure who "we" are here (Americans perhaps?), but humanity as a whole have known this for a long time, and acted accordingly. This is why presidents in some countries have the right to pardon people, as just one very evident example. That the USA exists as a country today is another example, which at the time when they were trying to create it, was clearly illegal, but since winners write history, still a "good" action.
The the laws aren't 100% unambiguous and strict is also another example, so there is room for interpretation, as something can be "by the book legal" but because of the clear evil motivations and "ignoring the spirit of the law", still be illegal. Of course, highly dependent on the country and lots of counter-examples.
I'm from the java world and it is basically java. Sure that it can do a lot more, for the most part any java developer will fell at home with the exception of lacking a robust static typing and the IDEs aren't really as good to spot syntax errors. I mean no shade to javascript developers, you just get used to a very robust building environment over there.
That’s not retrocompatible with all the .js files out there though.
One possibility is thus just make some vocalic derivation, which align with well known spontaneous evolution of languages like ablaut[1]. Following that, and keeping the dance connotation, jive[2] is an option. Or closer on phonetic distance to java (/ˈd͡ʒɑː.və/), there is jovial (/ˈd͡ʒəʊ.vɪ.əl/ or /ˈd͡ʒoʊ.vɪ.əl/ or /ˈd͡ʒoʊ.vəl/)[3].
In terms of standard, the specs already use "ECMAScript" and don't even mention JavaScript (https://github.com/tc39/ecma262/), although TC39 website does use it frequently. I guess they could officially recommend people stop using "JavaScript", but I doubt they care.
Otherwise, the petitioner Deno here is only a small part of the ecosystem and barely controls anything (and really nobody other than TC39 controls anything, which is good). They (or anyone else) can't just shout "stop saying JavaScript!" and expect people to follow.
Not to mention JavaScript is a simple, easy to pronounce word compared to ECMAScript despite the baggage, which is probably why they chose it in the first place.
Let's say the "JavaScript" name is officially deprecated somehow. People will continue to use the name for as long as it exists.
So Deno's petition tackles these problems, addresses the root cause and appears to be legally viable. That is the "right thing to do" here. Avoiding the name does not solve the problem. It never does.
Our trade has a solid tradition of terrible names for programming languages. They are ALL bad. The whole Ekmuhscrip.js schism fits perfectly. Yes, this is our circus, and these are our monkeys.
They now have GoFundMe where they are soliciting donations for a discovery phase of a <strike>patent</strike> trademark cancellation request.
They have just 50k USD out of 200k USD they are raising. (No idea if that's appropriate; from the outside, it seems like a lot of money, but also they are fighting Oracle which has unlimited money, so, yeah)
For some reason it's not linked in the page itself.
Not to nit-pic, but it's a Trademark cancellation - not a patent. The confusion probably came from the fact it's before the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Wouldn't Oracle's use of the Java trademark be problematic in a trademark cancellation request? We're talking about two very similar names for identical product types (i.e. programming languages). Indeed the similarity was originally intended to imply an association. I wouldn't be surprised if Oracle's sole interest in the trademark is due to its similarity and history.
My go to example for stuff like this is the Labour Party in the UK. For hundreds upon hundreds of years it was a two party country, between the Whigs and the Tories, later the Liberals and Conservatives.
At the turn of the 20th century the working class and trade union movement created their own party, the Labour Party. At the time I’m sure many people said it would be impossible to challenge the existing duopoly, that it was a waste of time to even try, etc etc.
By 1929 they were the largest party in the House of Commons. In 1945 they won the majority. It wasn’t an overnight victory. But a lot of people put in a lot of hard work because they believed a better future was possible and their effort paid off.
...do you imagine a nice, orderly, milquetoast system of voting on suitably agreeable topics only has existed for all of human history?
"History and politics" is very much the domain of people trying to do the impossible - to rewrite society as they will it. It would take a lot of either ignorance or disingenuity to claim that this has never gone well.
"Defeatism" is yet another shibboleth for people who refuse to accept reality. Wasting your money on things you can't change when you could be spending it on things you can is true "defeatism", as it accomplishes nothing.
I don't care about most ridiculous "battles" people are trying to wage, let alone this one, I was bluntly saying there are better things to spend money on if you do wish to "win battles". You're allowed to criticize things without offering a solution, especially if you don't care all that much about the topic at hand.
As a sidenote, Regarding your comment on my perceived lack of pragmatism, I'd point you to a definition: "dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations", which I'd say my comment very much was. Winning against a company that has succeeded in part due to government favouritism isn't realistic.
> In which case: maybe take your own advice and give up on changing anyone's mind?
I post on HN because it is a public forum and I wished to share my thoughts, not to change people's minds.
Powerful orgs have powerful enemies. There are many people who want to see Oracle out of the way. They’re not more powerful than the rest of the industry put together.
Wasn't that a copyright issue? I thought the point of contention is that Google allegedly copied Oracle's API design when they re-wrote Java for Android.
The license is Apache 2.0. With the trademark, they can tell everyone not to call their thing TypeScript but at this point, given the license, they cant't tell them not to copy it and change it and distribute that new thing (assuming the new distributors do so under the correct conditions).
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. — Brian Cantrill (https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s)
Why is this worth doing? What wrong with the status quo? The author does not give any examples of Oracle threatening people for using the JavaScript (tm) name.
The problem is FUD. Some guy at a company gets told he has to wait for legal to approve some open source project or initiative that happens to use JS in the name, because his boss heard there’s a trademark issue, and the enthusiasm fades and the idea gets sidelined. There’s probably been thousands of tiny little instances of FUD like that, which we’d never hear about, and which have led to good things not happening.
One clear instance of FUD we do know about is the spec itself is not titled with the name of the language it specifies, which is then its own source of confusion for newcomers trying to learn the web platform, and makes it harder for old timers to explain things, and is generally annoying. Complexity. Confusion. Doubt. Inaction.
Removing legal FUD from the world is a good cause. I don’t mind if it also works as a good marketing play for Deno.
This! I dont think people realize how many people fold like this. Almost nothing actually gets litigated. Litigation is a huge risk and very expensive. The profit incentive at companies means this fight is almost never worth it and its just easier to fold and use a competitor's technology.
Exactly. When was the last time you heard HTML called "HyperText Markup Language"? When was the last time you heard CSS called "Cascading Style Sheets"? We should stop saying "JavaScript" and fully switch to JS.
Speaking of JavaScript's evolution - I've been building a music player (muz11.com) and it's remarkable how far we've come. The Web Audio API, MediaSession for lock screen controls, smooth animations via requestAnimationFrame... all running client-side with no framework, just vanilla JS. Thirty years ago this would have required a desktop app and probably a record label deal.
The irony is that 'freeing' JavaScript from Oracle's trademark might matter less than freeing ourselves from the framework churn. The platform itself is incredibly capable now.
While I completely agree with the sentiment, there are 100 million reasons why it will never happen. Having dealt with Oracle for over 20 years, I have seen their predatory relationship with their customers. They will hold onto this trademark in the hope that they can somehow monetize it.
At some point they will approach companies, likely tech companies that produce a product or offering that can't be described without using the word "JavaScript". They will offer a "convenient" licensing agreement of $50,000 per year for the use of their trademark.
I guess that's the main issue. A lot of open source projects fell into this pit, when they put a related trademark into their name. Naming something OpenFastFirefox or iPhoneScript would cause a lot of trademark issues.
This looks to me that Deno folks are out of business options and decided to create a distraction instead, of selling us why to use Deno instead of nodejs.
Oh, this reminds me of the horror days when Oracle deliberately rolled out spyware (Ask Toolbar) in the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installer, that corporate admins and developers/testers inadvertently installed on millions of PCs.
Oracle never apologised for this sudden hijack (of an executable that was trusted and used by millions of IT people) and malicious behavior (no prior information given by Oracle for this malpractice), if I recall right.
I am sure that disaster was a wake up call for many developers and corporations to move away from Java dependency.
Imagine if this effort was spent on solving more pressing problems, like the recent yet another security kerfuffle, or the overloaded maintainers whom everyone depends on but reliably fails to support.
Call the language JS, everyone already understands it, it's used on all the logos because it's short, we already another popular language with a very compact name (Go, which is harder to look up without mangling its name, and it's still doing fine).
Whether the JS community can organize to address those issues may in fact depend on the real and social capital that this seemingly auxiliary campaign has the opportunity to effect.
Anyone reasonable would agree that Oracle does not even gain anything for their products by holding the trademark. They have zero benefit, except of course occasional bullying.
I'm a huge fan of statically typed languages, but shipping statically typed code as an artifact seems like it loses all of the advantages.
What does it matter to the user whether they get a runtime or a "compile time" error in their invisible devtools console? To them, the page simply doesn't work.
Static languages make sense when compilation happens at dev-time, where the actual devs can respond to the diagnostics. So it's far better to develop in a statically typed language, compile it ahead of time and ship that to the user. Which is exactly what people do now with wasm.
Dart is a statically typed high performance language intended for the browser. For a short time you could run Dart in the Chrome browser - as a JavaScript alternative. They then decided it was better to transpile to JS...
JavaScript is already strictly typed and safe, but the dynamic nature makes it difficult to optimize. So I think it's a weird decision to transpile to JS.
Rust runs quite well today via WebAssembly. Continuing to improve interop between Web API / WASM / language runtimes seems like a good route that allows people to use the language they prefer against shared Web APIs.
Developers always on their high horse, if after years of trying different options it didnt happen, maybe that means it's not what the world wants or need?
Important to remember Oracle is one of the most evil tech companies, and Larry Ellison is your prototypical evil villain. Oracle CEO Catz recently said "We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none" and "if they don't agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren't the right company for them".
I've said it before, I'll say it again. We should just stop using the term JavaScript. It's a bad choice of name and always has been.
It's caused way too much confusion over the years making people wrongly associate it with Java. My guess would be that associations exactly why Oracle doesn't want to give it up.
I would like to say go back to the original name of LiveScript from before Netscape tried to woo Sun, but the name LiveScript has been co-opted.
Something else with a J would probably be the least painful. JScript is permanently associated with Microsoft's terrible IE implementation. I offer up "JaScript" as it sounds largely like JavaScript but said with a drawl while retaining "JS".
Heck, I'll call it ECMAScript if that's what it takes. I'd rather not, but it's better than "JavaScript"
This has so many unintended consequences for LLM over the next four years I would think.
"JavaScript" tokenizes to 2 tokens (BPE). "ECMAScript" tokenizes to 3. No biggie here.
But the real cost isn't training—it's inference. Every time an LLM has to reconcile "ES6" with "JavaScript," explain the naming, or reason through "user said JavaScript but docs say ECMAScript"— Hidden chain-of-thought overhead. Clarification tokens.
Back of envelope: ~376M JS-related LLM queries/day globally. ~30% trigger some clarification overhead. That's ~5B extra tokens/day, ~1.85T tokens/year.
At ~0.000025 kWh/token inference cost, that's ~46 GWh/year.
~23,000 tonnes CO2 annually.
~200,000 tonnes over 4 years, based on rough growth of LLM use, and terms sticking around on both names over 4 years - probably wrong here too.
Sources
Token counts: OpenAI tiktoken cl100k_base encoder
2.5B ChatGPT queries/day: Sam Altman, July 2025 [1]
~4.7B total LLM interactions/day: aggregated from ChatGPT + Gemini (2B monthly AI Overviews users) + Copilot + Claude + others [2][3]
JS = 62% of developers: Stack Overflow 2024 Survey [4]
8% of queries JS-related: my estimate based on language prevalence
30% clarification rate: my estimate - probably way off
Energy/token: ~0.000025 kWh blended from Luccioni et al. and Patterson et al. inference estimates [5]
Silly question: how are people negatively impacted by the trademark of "JavaScript"?
Because in practice, isn't this a bit like "Kleenex" - where everyone knows you mean "tissue" (EMCAScript).
I actually think that people should rather use EcmaScript name instead of JavaScript, because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway). I wish Oracle started suing people to force everyone to use the better name.
I am going to sound crazy, but, if Microsoft would free up TypeScript and every browser added native TypeScript features to JavaScript… and then we all just started calling it TypeScript. Maybe? Then you would see native ts files. Oracle will never give up JS. The funny thing is the number of people who confuse Java and JS.
From experience, corporations usually don't give the general public any trademarked name. I assume TypeScript is trademarked right now; and I doubt Microsoft would ever liberate this. So in this regard, the corporations act in the same manner - selfish.
TFA says Microsoft offered the JScript trademark to be used in place of JavaScript, so there’s some indication of willingness to give up a trademark.
If browser makers offered to put it in the browser if the name is freed, I bet they could be convinced. The main problem right now, is that there isn't a major push to add TS to the browser.
The way I'm proposing it, technically it would be to make JS and TS kind of the same thing, but not fully, as someone else mentioned the goal of TS is still to tell the user (developer) about issues before the code runs. However, if done right TS files still get interpreted like normal JS, and technically you would want to compile them and not put them in the browser "raw" but you could still call it TS.
An important feature of TypeScript is identifying problems in your code before the user runs it, i.e. before a browser even comes into play.
So? If supported natively by the browser the browser could compile it on download.
You'll still get all the strong typing without have to wait for it to run.
For example an error in a little used branch would cause an error before the branch even runs.
> because it's a way better name (much less confusing, given that this lang doesn't have anything to do with Java anyway).
Probably if we were in the early 2000s this could have been a battle worth fighting. But considering we're in 2025 and probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point, even when you're deep in enterprise-land, I'm not sure it'd be less confusing.
Anyways, you're about two decades too late to this discussion :/
From days of old...
Invoking Applet Methods From JavaScript Code - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in...
and
Invoking JavaScript Code From an Applet - https://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/deployment/applet/in...
Aside from the "Java is cool, name everything Java" in the early days - there was scripting between the browser and the applet using a language named JavaScript.
> probably more people are aware of JavaScript than Java at this point
All the same, I probably get as many calls from recruiters to fill Java positions as I do JS positions. I've never used the former, and explaining it is always awkward!
I would tell them they are wasting your time by not offering you fitting jobs. It's on them to know what they are looking for, not on you
To be frank this is a service to you. No company you want to work at has a recruiter that doesn't understand the difference (a fully AI recruiter would be better than this experience).
For normal people Java is a short way to say JavaScript.
I have never heard anyone do that. Do “normal” people even discuss JavaScript?
EcmaScript is an awful name. It sounds too similar to eczema or ectoplasm. Ugly name.
Obligatory: https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-...
> 1995 - Brendan Eich reads up on every mistake ever made in designing a programming language, invents a few more, and creates LiveScript. Later, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of Java the language is renamed JavaScript. Later still, in an effort to cash in on the popularity of skin diseases the language is renamed ECMAScript.
Thought I was the only one seeing the resemblance (also flegma)
Filename extension is .js, mime type is text/javascript, millions of people call it javascript. I don't see this changing anytime soon
Unrelated but, the JavaScript capitalization is so odd
The irony is I belive the JavaScript creator wtnted to latch to Java's popularity to called it JavaScript and now both Java and JavaScript are owned by Oracle and they want the name but not want to change is to ECMAScript, it's real official name.
If you read the original JavaScript press release ( https://web.archive.org/web/20020808041248/http://wp.netscap... ), it's mainly intended as a language to write glue code so Java applets (where the real application logic would go) can interact with a webpage:
> With JavaScript, an HTML page might contain an intelligent form that performs loan payment or currency exchange calculations right on the client in response to user input. A multimedia weather forecast applet written in Java can be scripted by JavaScript to display appropriate images and sounds based on the current weather readings in a region. A server-side JavaScript script might pull data out of a relational database and format it in HTML on the fly. A page might contain JavaScript scripts that run on both the client and the server. On the server, the scripts might dynamically compose and format HTML content based on user preferences stored in a relational database, and on the client, the scripts would glue together an assortment of Java applets and HTML form elements into a live interactive user interface for specifying a net-wide search for information.
> "Programmers have been overwhelmingly enthusiastic about Java because it was designed from the ground up for the Internet. JavaScript is a natural fit, since it's also designed for the Internet and Unicode-based worldwide use," said Bill Joy, co-founder and vice president of research at Sun. "JavaScript will be the most effective method to connect HTML-based content to Java applets."
This was all actually implemented. JavaScript functions could call Java applet methods and vice versa (see https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/technotes/guides/deplo... ). Of course over time everyone abandoned applets because of all the security problems, and JavaScript became a good enough language to write application logic directly in it. Still, there's more meaning behind the name than it just being a cynical marketing move.
Happenstance, but that press release you linked to was December 4, 1995 - exactly 30 years ago today!
The language now called Groovy would have been JavaScript if the name wasn’t already taken.
Haha completely agree, it is the "scripting language" made in the image of Java! It's a great language by the way!
There was also beanshell if you remember, of course never as polished nor adopted like groovy but it was also fun to use.
> Of course over time everyone abandoned applets because of all the security problems,
Haha, or because it froze the whole browser for a few seconds upon loading. Unlike Macromedia Flash by the way.
I had a flash ad take 100% of my cpu back around 2005 or so. It wasn’t even trying to be malicious, just a poorly made ad. That was the day I stopped allowing any site exceptions in my ad blocker.
Of course 100% of that cpu is probably 1/10 of one core on any of my modern machines, so an ordinary and not-broken ad laden page routinely eats several times as many cycles now. Progress!
Websites can also use 100% of your CPU as well.
You might not be aware, but this is a trivial thing to do.
The story is somewhat more complicated than that and not amenable to a simple summary, because there are multiple entities with multiple motivations involved. Keeping it simple, the reason why the press release babbles about that is that that is corporate Netscape talking at the height of the Java throat-forcing era. Those of you who were not around for it have no equivalent experience for how Java was being marketed back then because no language since then has been backed by such a marketing budget, but Java was being crammed down our throats whether you like it or not. Not entirely unlike AI is today, only programmers were being even more targeted and could have been seeing more inflation-adjusted-dollar-per-person spend since the set of people being targeted is so much smaller than AI's "everyone in the world" target.
This cramming did not have any regard for whether Java was a good solution for a given problem, or indeed whether the Java of that era could solve the problem at all. It did not matter. Java was Good. Good was Java. Java was the Future. Java was the Entire Future. Get on board or get left behind. It was made all the more infuriating for the fact that the Java of this time period was not very good at all; terrible startup, terrible performance, absolutely shitty support for anything we take for granted nowadays like GUIs or basic data structure libraries, garbage APIs shoved out the door as quickly as possible so they could check the bullet point that "yes, java did that" as quickly as possible, like Java's copy-of-a-copy of the C++ streaming (which are themselves widely considered a terrible idea and an antipattern today!).
I'm not even saying this because I'm emotional or angry about it or hate Java today. Java today is only syntactically similar to Java in the 90s. It hardly resembles it in any other way. Despite the emotional tone of some of what I'm saying, I mean this as descriptive. Things really were getting shoveled out the door with a minimum of design and no real-world testing so that the Java that they were spending so much marketing money on could be said that yes! It connected to this database! Yes! It speaks XML! Yes! It has a cross-platform GUI! These things all barely work as long as you don't subject them to a stiff breeze, but the bullet point is checked!
The original plan was for Java to simply be the browser language, because that's what the suits wanted, because probably that's what the suits were being paid to want. Anyone can look around today and see that that is not a great match for a browser language, and a scripting language was a better idea especially for the browser in the beginning. However, the suits did not care.
The engineers did, and they were able to sneak a scripting language into the browser by virtue of putting "Java" in the name, which was enough to fool the suits. If my previous emotional text still has not impressed upon you the nature of this time, consider what this indicates from a post-modern analysis perspective. Look at Java. Look at Javascript. Observe their differences. Observe how one strains to even draw any similarities between them beyond the basics you get from being a computer language. Yet simply slapping the word "Java" on the language was enough to get the suits to not ask any more questions until much, much later. That's how crazy the Java push was at the time... you could slip an entirely different scripting language in under the cover of the incredible propaganda for Java.
So while the press release will say that it was intended to glue Java applets, because that's what the suits needed to hear at that point, it really wasn't the case and frankly it was never even all that great at it. Turns out bridging the world between Java and Javascript is actually pretty difficult; in 2025 we pay the requisite memory and CPU costs without so much as blinking but in an era of 32 or 64 MEGAbyte RAM profiles it was nowhere near as casual. The reality is that what Javascript was intended to be by the actual people who created it and essentially snuck it in under the noses of the suits is exactly what it is today: The browser scripting language. I think you also had some problems like we still have today with WASM trying to move larger things back and forth between the environments, only much, much more so.
We all wish it had more than a week to cook before being shoved out the door itself, but it was still immensely more successful than Java ever could have been.
(Finally, despite my repeated use of the term "suits", I'm not a radical anti-business hippie hacker type. I understand where my paycheck comes from. I'm not intrinsically against "business people". I use the term perjoratively even so. The dotcom era was full of bullshit and they earned that perjorative fair and square.)
Well the creator wanted to call it livescript. The creating company (Netscape) wanted the Java association.
> and now both Java and JavaScript are owned by
"Now" makes it sound like this is a recent acquisition of the JavaScript trademark. Oracle obtained it in 2009 as a result of the Sun purchase and if I remember correctly, Sun initially was issued the trademark back in the 90s sometimes.
You should consider reading the article.
[dead]
That boat sailed soooo many years ago tho. Oracle has no business claiming javascript as a trademark.
Or let Oracle trial everyone for the number of processors they have on their JavaScript machines.
Oracle is in the business of bullying others using their big legal dept.
We all know this.
> Oracle has no business claiming javascript as a trademark.
You think so. That's okay. But ultimately it is up to a judge to decide. Right?
I agree with the EcmaScript. Just ditch the stupid name. Get all the petition signers to agree an move on. Fuck Oracle. Fuck JavaScript (it's nothing like Java anyway).
> But ultimately it is up to a judge to decide. Right?
I think we are getting a rude awakening about what is legal versus what is actually right are not always the same thing. There are some the horrible, horrible things here and the laws need updating, as opposed to us simply saying this is for a judge to decide and there is nothing else we can do.
I am ok with ditching the JavaScript name. I understand this cuts the problem entirely. However, there are other problems we have that we can't bypass so easily.
We need copyright terms to be much reduced. We need CFAA fully repealed and not replaced by anything. We need to abolish software patents. There is a lot we need to do that will likely take a century to accomplish and that's likely being too optimistic.
What we can't do is leave everything up to the judges because clearly even if we get a favorable ruling today, the precedent can be removed by another stroke of a pen.
> I think we are getting a rude awakening about what is legal versus what is actually right are not always the same thing.
I'm not sure who "we" are here (Americans perhaps?), but humanity as a whole have known this for a long time, and acted accordingly. This is why presidents in some countries have the right to pardon people, as just one very evident example. That the USA exists as a country today is another example, which at the time when they were trying to create it, was clearly illegal, but since winners write history, still a "good" action.
The the laws aren't 100% unambiguous and strict is also another example, so there is room for interpretation, as something can be "by the book legal" but because of the clear evil motivations and "ignoring the spirit of the law", still be illegal. Of course, highly dependent on the country and lots of counter-examples.
I'm from the java world and it is basically java. Sure that it can do a lot more, for the most part any java developer will fell at home with the exception of lacking a robust static typing and the IDEs aren't really as good to spot syntax errors. I mean no shade to javascript developers, you just get used to a very robust building environment over there.
That’s not retrocompatible with all the .js files out there though.
One possibility is thus just make some vocalic derivation, which align with well known spontaneous evolution of languages like ablaut[1]. Following that, and keeping the dance connotation, jive[2] is an option. Or closer on phonetic distance to java (/ˈd͡ʒɑː.və/), there is jovial (/ˈd͡ʒəʊ.vɪ.əl/ or /ˈd͡ʒoʊ.vɪ.əl/ or /ˈd͡ʒoʊ.vəl/)[3].
Might our jovial·script enjoy our life.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indo-European_ablaut
[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jive
[3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jovial
.js, short for jecmascript, easy
JabbaScript
Would actually paint a very descriptive state about the ecosystem.
Also jiva (/ˈd͡ʒiːvə/) is an option.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/jiva
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmO4zvq9HtE
I think most of us just call it JS now. And we really write mostly TS anyway.
that would be very culturally/industry specific. Personally, I do call it javascript.
Who are "people"? How would all of this start?
In terms of standard, the specs already use "ECMAScript" and don't even mention JavaScript (https://github.com/tc39/ecma262/), although TC39 website does use it frequently. I guess they could officially recommend people stop using "JavaScript", but I doubt they care.
Otherwise, the petitioner Deno here is only a small part of the ecosystem and barely controls anything (and really nobody other than TC39 controls anything, which is good). They (or anyone else) can't just shout "stop saying JavaScript!" and expect people to follow.
Not to mention JavaScript is a simple, easy to pronounce word compared to ECMAScript despite the baggage, which is probably why they chose it in the first place.
Let's say the "JavaScript" name is officially deprecated somehow. People will continue to use the name for as long as it exists.
So Deno's petition tackles these problems, addresses the root cause and appears to be legally viable. That is the "right thing to do" here. Avoiding the name does not solve the problem. It never does.
But everyone already calls it JS. I think the transition would have been so much easier if the official name started with "J".
Just rename it to "JS" (jay-ess) and forget about having the letters stand for anything.
JECMAScript
JabbaScript
Like JunoScript or JangoScript? JavaScript is just very outdated ECMAScript.
soulJaboy Script
How is it outdated?
I guess the argument is that technically JavaScript is still stuck on version 1 or some other low number. The language that has evolved is ECMAScript.
JuicyScript
Our trade has a solid tradition of terrible names for programming languages. They are ALL bad. The whole Ekmuhscrip.js schism fits perfectly. Yes, this is our circus, and these are our monkeys.
> Yes, this is our circus, and these are our monkeys.
In this case, it's Oracle's circus and we are the monkeys.
But some of us get to be pretty looking penguins in this circus of ours.
What we use nowadays is actually ECMAScript and not JavaScript. We just call it JavaScript.
If enough people call it JavaScript, it is JavaScript. Yes really. Even in a legal sense (and deno are arguing this is already the case).
It’s simply not a better name. If it was, it would’ve caught on by now.
EcmaScript just sounds icky.
I still cannot read it without immediately seeing a contraction of eczema.
Yes! I said this same thing in a separate comment! It sounds like Eczema Script
> people should rather use EcmaScript name instead of JavaScript
Or go back to calling it “LiveScript”
I'm not changing all the extensions on my files :-)
Just go with the flow - call it js.
Switch everything natively to Typescript.
Last phase of embrace, extend, extinguish eh?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
It’s unfortunate that it sounds like some sort of skin disease.
> I actually think that people should rather use EcmaScript name instead of JavaScript
Take it to Twitter
Apart from anything else, ECMAScript is a mouthful! Eeh-cee-emm-ay-script. Five syllables.
Don't most people just pronounce it Eck-ma?
It should've been called AcmeScript. The association with Wile E. Coyote would've been fitting.
That’s actually the perfect name for it!
Since the association renamed itself to “Ecma International” in 1994, I believe we can just call it Eck-mah-script.
And it sounds like a skin condition.
Flaky when under pressure? Irritating results? Sites look and feel better without it?
Sounds appropriate to me.
It's a genuinely terrible name.
Maybe it should just be pronounced eck-ma-script so it's got the same number of syllables as ja-va-script.
It is pronounced like that, typically
I've only ever heard it pronounced as "EcmaScript" not E-C-M-A Script"
They now have GoFundMe where they are soliciting donations for a discovery phase of a <strike>patent</strike> trademark cancellation request.
They have just 50k USD out of 200k USD they are raising. (No idea if that's appropriate; from the outside, it seems like a lot of money, but also they are fighting Oracle which has unlimited money, so, yeah)
For some reason it's not linked in the page itself.
https://www.gofundme.com/f/help-us-challenge-oracles-javascr...
https://deno.com/blog/javascript-tm-gofundme
Not to nit-pic, but it's a Trademark cancellation - not a patent. The confusion probably came from the fact it's before the US Patent and Trademark Office.
Wouldn't Oracle's use of the Java trademark be problematic in a trademark cancellation request? We're talking about two very similar names for identical product types (i.e. programming languages). Indeed the similarity was originally intended to imply an association. I wouldn't be surprised if Oracle's sole interest in the trademark is due to its similarity and history.
[flagged]
> You can't beat City Hall
This broadcast was brought to you by the Better Things Aren’t Possible Party
Because trying to do the impossible has gone down so well in history and politics.
My go to example for stuff like this is the Labour Party in the UK. For hundreds upon hundreds of years it was a two party country, between the Whigs and the Tories, later the Liberals and Conservatives.
At the turn of the 20th century the working class and trade union movement created their own party, the Labour Party. At the time I’m sure many people said it would be impossible to challenge the existing duopoly, that it was a waste of time to even try, etc etc.
By 1929 they were the largest party in the House of Commons. In 1945 they won the majority. It wasn’t an overnight victory. But a lot of people put in a lot of hard work because they believed a better future was possible and their effort paid off.
...do you imagine a nice, orderly, milquetoast system of voting on suitably agreeable topics only has existed for all of human history?
"History and politics" is very much the domain of people trying to do the impossible - to rewrite society as they will it. It would take a lot of either ignorance or disingenuity to claim that this has never gone well.
Stop spreading defeatism. Either channel these energies into something better, or just get out of the way.
"Defeatism" is yet another shibboleth for people who refuse to accept reality. Wasting your money on things you can't change when you could be spending it on things you can is true "defeatism", as it accomplishes nothing.
You don't understand. They're calling the manager. Everything can be solved by calling the manager.
[flagged]
I don't care about most ridiculous "battles" people are trying to wage, let alone this one, I was bluntly saying there are better things to spend money on if you do wish to "win battles". You're allowed to criticize things without offering a solution, especially if you don't care all that much about the topic at hand.
As a sidenote, Regarding your comment on my perceived lack of pragmatism, I'd point you to a definition: "dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations", which I'd say my comment very much was. Winning against a company that has succeeded in part due to government favouritism isn't realistic.
> In which case: maybe take your own advice and give up on changing anyone's mind?
I post on HN because it is a public forum and I wished to share my thoughts, not to change people's minds.
[flagged]
Because as we all know, quantity is better than quality.
Powerful orgs have powerful enemies. There are many people who want to see Oracle out of the way. They’re not more powerful than the rest of the industry put together.
1) Put JS in maintenance mode, don’t add any language features, only runtime
2) TS becomes the official mainline, whoever doesn’t like types can just keep writing as they did before, because valid JS is valid TS
Problem solved, it’s not that difficult.
TS trademark is owned by Microsoft.
That would be a case of out of the frying pan into the fire. Not really better.
Call it ES2026 officially and let other people devalue MS' trademark as they refer to that (and later versions) as TS.
...and we'll have another API warfa^H^H^H^H lawsuit that we had for Java.
Wasn't that a copyright issue? I thought the point of contention is that Google allegedly copied Oracle's API design when they re-wrote Java for Android.
Wouldn't Microsoft do the same thing when somebody copies the language and names it "TypedWebBrowserScriptbutFree"?
https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript/blob/main/LICENSE.tx...
The license is Apache 2.0. With the trademark, they can tell everyone not to call their thing TypeScript but at this point, given the license, they cant't tell them not to copy it and change it and distribute that new thing (assuming the new distributors do so under the correct conditions).
Same as Go and Google then. Is the ownership of the trademark of the name/logo of a FOSS language really that big a deal?
That's the entire issue here: JS is a FOSS language and they don't like that Oracle owns the trademark.
Oops. Outing myself as someone who didn't read TFA.
ah yes, the regressive approach
I wish JavaScript stopped being an abandoned trademark.
monkey paw's finger starts curling
Very quaint that they think they can make some legal argument against Oracle
Don't anthropomorphise the lawnmower.
The context:
> Do not fall into the trap of anthropomorphising Larry Ellison. You need to think of Larry Ellison the way you think of a lawnmower. You don't anthropomorphize your lawnmower, the lawnmower just mows the lawn, you stick your hand in there and it'll chop it off, the end. You don't think 'oh, the lawnmower hates me' -- lawnmower doesn't give a shit about you, lawnmower can't hate you. Don't anthropomorphize the lawnmower. Don't fall into that trap about Oracle. — Brian Cantrill (https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?t=33m1s)
Came here for this. Was not disappoint.
Why is this worth doing? What wrong with the status quo? The author does not give any examples of Oracle threatening people for using the JavaScript (tm) name.
They have linked to an example from one of the blog posts: https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/14vnipl/rust_f...
The example is indeed two years old. I also couldn't find any point in the article that explains why this is worth doing.
But it's a valid example, isn't it?
Someone just wanted to share their Rust + JavaScript knowledge with people, and they got a cease and desist. It's clearly not ideal.
The problem is FUD. Some guy at a company gets told he has to wait for legal to approve some open source project or initiative that happens to use JS in the name, because his boss heard there’s a trademark issue, and the enthusiasm fades and the idea gets sidelined. There’s probably been thousands of tiny little instances of FUD like that, which we’d never hear about, and which have led to good things not happening.
One clear instance of FUD we do know about is the spec itself is not titled with the name of the language it specifies, which is then its own source of confusion for newcomers trying to learn the web platform, and makes it harder for old timers to explain things, and is generally annoying. Complexity. Confusion. Doubt. Inaction.
Removing legal FUD from the world is a good cause. I don’t mind if it also works as a good marketing play for Deno.
This! I dont think people realize how many people fold like this. Almost nothing actually gets litigated. Litigation is a huge risk and very expensive. The profit incentive at companies means this fight is almost never worth it and its just easier to fold and use a competitor's technology.
I think it's mostly a marketing play by Deno.
"If you do not act, we will challenge your ownership by filing a petition for cancellation with the USPTO."
So, just go ahead and do it already. Your cute letter isn't going to change anything.
They already did, a year ago:
https://deno.com/blog/deno-v-oracle
This post is more than a year old.
It's time for browsers to just consume typescript
Should have [2024]. The "postmark" says Sep 16, 2024.
And the list of updates at the top says they've since filed a petition to dismiss the trademark, and Oracle has filed to dismiss the petition.
I think it is posted because of the update on Dec 2nd 2025 where Oracle responded with a request to dismiss.
Edit: I read that date shockingly wrong, their response was February of 2025 so this is pretty old.
This is pointless. Oracle is not a democracy, it's a lawnmower.
Well, it's not up to Oracle. It is up to the US government (USPTO).
Which you could make a strong case for also not being a democracy and rather a lawnmower... But I digress.
“I die,” grass
Let's stop calling it "JavaScript" entirely. "JS" is right there.
Exactly. When was the last time you heard HTML called "HyperText Markup Language"? When was the last time you heard CSS called "Cascading Style Sheets"? We should stop saying "JavaScript" and fully switch to JS.
YavaScript
It may have been a mistake to specify a name that can be trademarked in the first place.
They thought of that and called the spec ECMAScript instead.
Does anyone think they actually sent them a letter? Which has the greatest likelihood of being read by capable eyes? The letter or the web page?
Speaking of JavaScript's evolution - I've been building a music player (muz11.com) and it's remarkable how far we've come. The Web Audio API, MediaSession for lock screen controls, smooth animations via requestAnimationFrame... all running client-side with no framework, just vanilla JS. Thirty years ago this would have required a desktop app and probably a record label deal.
The irony is that 'freeing' JavaScript from Oracle's trademark might matter less than freeing ourselves from the framework churn. The platform itself is incredibly capable now.
> Thirty years ago this would have required a desktop app and probably a record label deal.
And that would have been just fine.
Until you have to pay back your advance to the record label.
While I completely agree with the sentiment, there are 100 million reasons why it will never happen. Having dealt with Oracle for over 20 years, I have seen their predatory relationship with their customers. They will hold onto this trademark in the hope that they can somehow monetize it.
At some point they will approach companies, likely tech companies that produce a product or offering that can't be described without using the word "JavaScript". They will offer a "convenient" licensing agreement of $50,000 per year for the use of their trademark.
They used this playbook with Java, an easier path because they had something more substantial than a trademark, but the approach will be the same. https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/165kzxg/oraclejav...
As Oracle's debt problems mount, the company seems increasingly likely to weaponize this trademark against companies—despite otherwise showing little interest in the word. https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/us/w...
The Oracle Org Chart by Manu Cornet springs to mind reading this: https://www.globalnerdy.com/2011/07/03/org-charts-of-the-big...
I'd rather start a completely new, better language for the browser.
Like Dart and the Dartium browser
:o has anyone thought of this before? /s
Can they drop javascript trademark without threating Java trademark?
I guess that's the main issue. A lot of open source projects fell into this pit, when they put a related trademark into their name. Naming something OpenFastFirefox or iPhoneScript would cause a lot of trademark issues.
i wish we instead dropped js for something vastly more sane.
Amen to that (will never happen though).
This looks to me that Deno folks are out of business options and decided to create a distraction instead, of selling us why to use Deno instead of nodejs.
Actual title: "Oracle, It's time to free Javascript"
Oh, this reminds me of the horror days when Oracle deliberately rolled out spyware (Ask Toolbar) in the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) installer, that corporate admins and developers/testers inadvertently installed on millions of PCs.
Oracle never apologised for this sudden hijack (of an executable that was trusted and used by millions of IT people) and malicious behavior (no prior information given by Oracle for this malpractice), if I recall right.
I am sure that disaster was a wake up call for many developers and corporations to move away from Java dependency.
Imagine if this effort was spent on solving more pressing problems, like the recent yet another security kerfuffle, or the overloaded maintainers whom everyone depends on but reliably fails to support.
Call the language JS, everyone already understands it, it's used on all the logos because it's short, we already another popular language with a very compact name (Go, which is harder to look up without mangling its name, and it's still doing fine).
Whether the JS community can organize to address those issues may in fact depend on the real and social capital that this seemingly auxiliary campaign has the opportunity to effect.
> Go, which is harder to look up without mangling its name
don't get me started on typescript. Until recently I had to use its full name when googling something
>Imagine if this effort was spent on solving more pressing problems,
Are you suggesting that Ryan Dahl's contribution has been less than satisfactory so far?
exactly, just a whole lot of haters got nothing better to do.
Official name is ECMAScript. Maybe it's time to drop "Javascript".
Anyone reasonable would agree that Oracle does not even gain anything for their products by holding the trademark. They have zero benefit, except of course occasional bullying.
Don't underestimate the benefits of the power of bullying. Just look at the current US administration.
Why in 2025 can we not ship a statically typed high performance language for browsers?
I'm a huge fan of statically typed languages, but shipping statically typed code as an artifact seems like it loses all of the advantages.
What does it matter to the user whether they get a runtime or a "compile time" error in their invisible devtools console? To them, the page simply doesn't work.
Static languages make sense when compilation happens at dev-time, where the actual devs can respond to the diagnostics. So it's far better to develop in a statically typed language, compile it ahead of time and ship that to the user. Which is exactly what people do now with wasm.
Because every time someone proposes it the immediate follow up is “which language?”, which everyone argues about until they’re exhausted and give up.
Which is why WebAssembly is the right answer.
Dart is a statically typed high performance language intended for the browser. For a short time you could run Dart in the Chrome browser - as a JavaScript alternative. They then decided it was better to transpile to JS... JavaScript is already strictly typed and safe, but the dynamic nature makes it difficult to optimize. So I think it's a weird decision to transpile to JS.
Rust runs quite well today via WebAssembly. Continuing to improve interop between Web API / WASM / language runtimes seems like a good route that allows people to use the language they prefer against shared Web APIs.
Because there is no consensus on what that should be, and vendors have so little motivation they just outsource most browser development to Google.
Developers always on their high horse, if after years of trying different options it didnt happen, maybe that means it's not what the world wants or need?
> Why in 2025 can we not ship a statically typed high performance language for browsers?
Which one?
Seems sensible to me, Oracle doesn't seem to use the trademark.
But also, what are the consequences of Oracle having the trademark, why is this an issue?
Important to remember Oracle is one of the most evil tech companies, and Larry Ellison is your prototypical evil villain. Oracle CEO Catz recently said "We are not flexible regarding our mission, and our commitment to Israel is second to none" and "if they don't agree with our mission to support the State of Israel, then maybe we aren't the right company for them".
[dead]
[flagged]
I've said it before, I'll say it again. We should just stop using the term JavaScript. It's a bad choice of name and always has been.
It's caused way too much confusion over the years making people wrongly associate it with Java. My guess would be that associations exactly why Oracle doesn't want to give it up.
I would like to say go back to the original name of LiveScript from before Netscape tried to woo Sun, but the name LiveScript has been co-opted.
Something else with a J would probably be the least painful. JScript is permanently associated with Microsoft's terrible IE implementation. I offer up "JaScript" as it sounds largely like JavaScript but said with a drawl while retaining "JS".
Heck, I'll call it ECMAScript if that's what it takes. I'd rather not, but it's better than "JavaScript"
This has so many unintended consequences for LLM over the next four years I would think.
"JavaScript" tokenizes to 2 tokens (BPE). "ECMAScript" tokenizes to 3. No biggie here.
But the real cost isn't training—it's inference. Every time an LLM has to reconcile "ES6" with "JavaScript," explain the naming, or reason through "user said JavaScript but docs say ECMAScript"— Hidden chain-of-thought overhead. Clarification tokens.
Back of envelope: ~376M JS-related LLM queries/day globally. ~30% trigger some clarification overhead. That's ~5B extra tokens/day, ~1.85T tokens/year.
At ~0.000025 kWh/token inference cost, that's ~46 GWh/year.
~23,000 tonnes CO2 annually. ~200,000 tonnes over 4 years, based on rough growth of LLM use, and terms sticking around on both names over 4 years - probably wrong here too.
Sources
Token counts: OpenAI tiktoken cl100k_base encoder 2.5B ChatGPT queries/day: Sam Altman, July 2025 [1] ~4.7B total LLM interactions/day: aggregated from ChatGPT + Gemini (2B monthly AI Overviews users) + Copilot + Claude + others [2][3] JS = 62% of developers: Stack Overflow 2024 Survey [4] 8% of queries JS-related: my estimate based on language prevalence 30% clarification rate: my estimate - probably way off Energy/token: ~0.000025 kWh blended from Luccioni et al. and Patterson et al. inference estimates [5]
CO2: 0.5 kg/kWh global grid average
[1] techcrunch.com/2025/07/21/chatgpt-users-send-2-5-billion-prompts-a-day [2] demandsage.com/chatgpt-statistics [3] sqmagazine.co.uk/chatgpt-vs-google-gemini-statistics [4] survey.stackoverflow.co/2024 [5] arxiv.org/pdf/2211.02001 (BLOOM carbon footprint paper)