The time traveller’s guide to web technologies

A presentation at Nordic.js in October 2025 in Stockholm, Sweden by Phil Hawksworth

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2nd October 2025 Nordic.js The time traveller’s guide to web technologies Phil Hawksworth he/him

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17th September 2025

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Any song

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18th September 2025

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18th September 2025

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2nd October 2025 Nordic.js The time traveller’s guide to web technologies Phil Hawksworth he/him

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10 Years s j . c i d Nor

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10 Days JavaScr ipt

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30 Years JavaScr ipt

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30 Minutes Me

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Reflect Consider Confess Many great talks Learn Party  NOT TO SCALE  Apply Heat death of the universe

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b u H t i G Link Tw i t e dI n y k S Bl ue te r @ Phil Hawksworth.dev he/him Head of Developer Relations, Deno We b

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In the beginning…

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May 1995 Brendan Eich creates the first version of JavaScript https://cybercultural.com/p/1995-the-birth-of-javascript/

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Evolve & e v o r p Im

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December 1995 Netscape and Sun Microsystems announce JavaScript https://www.tech-insider.org/java/research/1995/1204.html

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March 1996 Microsoft introduces JScript in Internet Explorer https://cybercultural.com/p/1996-microsoft-activates-the-internet-with-activex-jscript/

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March 1996 Netscape Navigator 2.0 is released with JavaScript 1.0

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if (document.layers) { // Do all the Netscape things } else { // Do all the Internet Explorer things }

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June 1997 Netscape submits JavaScript to ECMA International

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Technical Committees TC39 TC26 ECMAScript Acoustics

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Technical Committees having completed their tasks TC14 ✓ Paper sizes TC34 ✓ Office devices

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March 1999 Microsoft releases Internet Explorer 5

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April 2001 The first JSON message is sent https://twobithistory.org/2017/09/21/the-rise-and-rise-of-json.html

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June 2002 JSLint is introduced Ecosystem Enrichment https://web.archive.org/web/20180226015758/https://codekitapp.com/help/jslint/

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September 2002 Mozilla releases Phoenix 0.1 to compete with Internet Explorer

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January 2003 Apple introduces Safari and WebKit

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April 2004 A beta version of Gmail is released

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February 2005 Jesse James Garrett coins “AJAX” https://designftw.mit.edu/lectures/apis/ajax_adaptive_path.pdf

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A confession https://unsplash.com/photos/a-man-holds-his-head-while-sitting-on-a-sofa-BuNWp1bL0nc

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I adore JavaScript but I like to use as little of it as possible. And ideally, no less.  Phil Hawksworth, today (hoping we can still be friends)

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WEBCONSOLE

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Library and utility functions. document.getElementById(“some-id”);

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Library and utility functions. function getById(id) { return document.getElementById(id) || null; }

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Library and utility functions. function $(id) { return document.getElementById(id) || null; }

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March 2006 John Resig pushes the first commits to jQuery https://github.com/jquery/jquery/commit/8a4a1edf047f2c272f663866eb7b5fcd644d65b3

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jquery.com

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Writing JavaScript should be fun — jQuery.com, 2006

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An interactivity explosion

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Flash vs HTML5

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January 2007 The first Apple iPhone released Reach & Habitats

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The way we interact with the UI all seems so obvious now

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OMFG DEVICES @philhawksworth

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Flash vs HTML5

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! e ar We c WHY

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Suddenly stakeholders gave a shit

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Awareness and empathy

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Play

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PLEASE DON’T TAKE MY FLASH AWAY FROM ME! – My buddy, Steve

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May 2008 Douglas Crockford publishes “JavaScript: The Good Parts”

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May 2008 Google releases the Chrome browser https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/google-chrome-beta.html

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January 2009 CommonJS is created (originally named ServerJS

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March 2009 Ryan Dahl begins work on Node.js Reach & Habitats

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo_B4LTHi3I&list=PPSV

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April 2009 Oracle acquires Sun Microsystems https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-buys-sun-042009.html

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™ JavaScript

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June 2009 The first commit on Express.js is created

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August 2009 Jeff Atwood coins Atwood’s Law

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Any application which can be written in javaScript, will eventually be written in JavaScript  Atwood’s Law

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January 2010 npm 1.0 is released Ecosystem Enrichment

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October 2010 AngularJS and Backbone.js are released m e t s y s o Ec t n e m Enrich

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June 2011 Node.js is ported to Windows Reach & Habitats

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October 2012 Microsoft makes TypeScript 0.8 available for the public m e t s y s o c E t n e m Enrich

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May 2013 Facebook releases React Ecosystem t n e m h c i Enr

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July 2013 Gulp is released Ecosystem Enrichment

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Hipster tax

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Over Engineered

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Over Under Engineered

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February 2014 Vue.js is released m e t s y s o Ec t n e m h c i r n E

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October 2014 Meteor reaches 1.0 Ecosystem Enrichment

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November 2014 Facebook launches Flow Ecosystem Enrichment

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November 2014 Amazon announces AWS Lambda Reach & Habitats https://press.aboutamazon.com/2014/11/amazon-web-services-announces-aws-lambda

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Serverless

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Just write code

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Just write code

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July 2015 ECMAScript 6 is released ES2015 Evolve & e v o r p Im

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March 2016 Azer Koculu removes Leftpad from npm

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April 2016 Microsoft releases VSCode 1.0

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a user ’til I die.

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I’m a for the time being.

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September 2016 Angular Angular2 released

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October 2016 Next.js 1.0 released

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e ov m s g n i Some th Quickly e ov m s g n i Some th Slowly

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March 2017 The initial commit for the Temporal proposal is created

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Because…

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Working with time and dates in JavaScript can be a massive pain in the arse  Brendan Eich ( citation needed )

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March 2017 The initial commit for the Temporal proposal is created

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April 2017 Prettier 1.0 released

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September 2017 Facebook launches Yarn

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September 2017 Cloudflare launches Cloudflare Workers s t a it b a H & h c a e R

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June 2018 Ryan Dahl teases a new project in a talk about his regrets about Node

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“node”.split(“”).sort().join(“”);

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May 2020 JavaScript makes it into space with SpaceX Dragon Reach & Habitats

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May 2020 Deno 1.0 released

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September 2024 The legal battle against Oracle to #FreeJavaScript begins

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javascript.tm

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October 2024 Deno 2.0 released and I join Deno

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So?

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Heat death of the universe We’re not done

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e v l o v E & e v o r p Im t a h t o d e W s t a it b a H & h c a e R Ecosystem Enrichment

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! e ar We c WHY

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™ We own JavaScript

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We drive it forward

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We use it to do incredible things

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We can use it responsibly

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We can use it whimsically

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deno.com/blog/history-of-javascript A Brief History of JavaScript javascript.tm Open letter to Oracle bsky.app/profile/philhawksworth.dev Phil Hawksworth on Bluesky

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Thanks. philhawksworth.dev findthat.at / time