JavaScript isn’t Java. There! With that clarification out of the way, you can move on to bigger, more important learning, like how to make cool sliders. In all seriousness, JavaScript is one implementation of a specification known as ECMAScript. You’ll learn more about ECMAScript later in this chapter.
Where did JavaScript come from? You might not know the rich and storied history of JavaScript—
and you might not really care much about it, either. If that’s the case, you might be tempted to jump
ahead to the next chapter and begin coding JavaScript. Doing so, of course, would be a mistake—
you’d miss all the wonderful information that follows in this chapter. And understanding a bit about
the history of JavaScript is important to understanding how the language is implemented in various
environments today.