Should JavaScript Retire? Insights from Douglas Crockford and Emerging Alternatives

JSON之父近日提出惊人之语：JavaScript应该消失。

According to the Stack Overflow 2022 Developer Survey, JavaScript has been the most popular language for ten consecutive years, used by over 65% of developers.

Douglas Crockford, the creator of JSON and many JavaScript tools, recently said in an interview that JavaScript has become an obstacle to progress.

He stated, “The best thing we can do today is to retire JavaScript. Twenty years ago I was one of its few supporters. The combination of nested functions and dynamic objects was great, and I spent a decade trying to fix its flaws, achieving modest success with ES5.”

Crockford argues that the language’s continued expansion has turned it into a barrier, and that the community should focus on a new language that resembles “E” rather than JavaScript.

Crockford and Mark Miller created the language E, an object‑oriented language designed for secure distributed computing. It is not a new language; it originated before 1997 and was later redesigned by Miller to eliminate many of Java’s shortcomings.

Brendan Eich created JavaScript in just ten days for Netscape in 1995, describing it as a “quick‑and‑dirty” language for embedding in web pages, with a syntax related to C rather than Java.

Since then, JavaScript’s growth in features has made it increasingly complex, diverging from Eich’s original vision. Many developers now write TypeScript, a strict superset of JavaScript invented by Anders Hejlsberg, to gain static typing and better suitability for large applications.

WebAssembly, a binary format that can be targeted by languages such as C, C++, C#, and Rust, is another technology that could diminish JavaScript’s dominance.

Reddit users have expressed that the DOM API itself is a limiting abstraction, suggesting that browsers should replace it with a graphics‑oriented engine supporting 2D/3D rendering and better discoverability.

Potential replacements for JavaScript mentioned include:

TypeScript – a statically typed superset of JavaScript.

WebAssembly – a binary compilation target for multiple languages.

Ruby – some developers wish to embed Ruby in browsers.

Dart – with type safety, JIT/AOT compilation, and strong tooling.

JavaScript History

In 1995, Netscape hired Brendan Eich, who delivered the first version of JavaScript in ten days, coinciding with the release of Netscape 2.

In 1996, JavaScript was submitted to ECMA International, leading to the first ECMAScript standard in 1997.

Subsequent versions (ES3 in 1999, ES5 in 2009, ES6/ES2015 in 2015) added many features, modernizing the language.

Since then, ECMAScript has seen annual updates, with ECMAScript 2022 (the 13th edition) approved in June 2022.

For further reading, see the linked articles and resources.