Introduction to JavaScript

JavaScript Birth

JavaScript was created at Netscape in 1998, and the name JavaScript is a trademark of Oracle. Netscape submitted the language for standardization to ECMA (the European Computer Manufacturer’s Association) and, because of trademark issues, the standardized version of the language was given the name ECMAScript.
Browser Vendors' have different names for their ECMAScript implementation: Mozilla calls it JavaScript and Microsoft JScript.

JavaScript Versions

By 2008, all major web browsers were compliant with ECMAScript 3.

ECMAScript 4 was never released.

In December 2009, ECMAScript 5 (informally ECMAScript Harmony) was standardized.

In June 2015, ECMAScript 2015 (informally ECMAScript 6 or ES6 Harmony) was finalized.

ES2015 / ES6 new features include: class declarations, for...of loops, iterator objects, generator functions, arrow function expression, let keyword, const keyword, binary data, typed arrays, new collections (maps, sets and WeakMap), promises, modules, number and math enhancements, reflection, proxies, template literals for strings.

http://caniuse.com/#search=ecmascript 2015

Java VS JavaScript

	Java	JavaScript
language features	semi-compiled semi-interpreted object oriented functional only from Java 8 strongly typed classical inheritance	interpreted object oriented lambda or functional loosely typed prototypal inheritance
data types	classes and primitives	objects and primitives
namespace	package namespace	object/function namespace
meaning of object	objects or class instances	objects or reference types
meaning of class	classes as blueprint for objects	constructor functions for building classes of objects
meaning of this keyword	a reference to the current object	a reference to the current context
how to implement utility functions	static methods for utility functions	objects in the global scope for utility functions