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How To Spell JavaScript

David Wickes on May 08, 2020

I thought I'd explain how to spell JavaScript, and go through some common mistakes developers encounter when writing the word. Javascript...

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ruthmoog • May 8 '20

It is PascalCase since the J is capitalized, whereas camelCase has a small head and then humps.

David Wickes • May 8 '20

hidden_dude • May 10 '20 • Edited

Camel case was heavily used in Smalltalk (and probably the first introduction for most people). Which is definitely not among the "worst" languages.

It was so ahead of its time that languages like JavaScript and Python and others are still trying to catch up with it.

hidden_dude • May 10 '20 • Edited

Begin: opinionated comment

Maybe we should call it "hidden_dude's 11th rule":

"Any sufficiently evolved OO language ends up turning into a poorly implemented syntax mishmash of OO and functional features that are only half of expressive as Smalltalk with none of its elegance"

All languages want to become Smalltalk, that's why in the last 3 decades we've slowly seen them add classes, then things like VMs and garbage collection, and more recently things like closures and map/reduce (collect/inject), dynamic debugging, etc.

But even the "cleaner" languages like Python are still bogged down by their inferior syntax.

End: opinionated comment

David Wickes • May 10 '20

Sorry, this is a post about how to spell JavaScript. I don't know if I can help you with your consistent misspellings of Lisp as "Smalltalk" 😉

hidden_dude • May 10 '20 • Edited

;)

Lisp is not OO. Smalltalk included what Lisp invented. And nobody in their right mind likes Lisp syntax.. too many parenthesis.

David Wickes • May 11 '20

Lisp is not OO.

🤨

I look forward to convincing you otherwise!

Panda Quests • May 8 '20 • Edited

You forgot "JS"

Pacharapol Withayasakpunt • May 8 '20

I have seen Java Script as well.

peerreynders • Oct 23 '20 • Edited

Spelling "JavaScript" can get you into trouble with Oracle.

twitter.com/jaesustein/status/9865...

So like it or not spelling "ECMAScript" (ES) is less hassle.

Jake Varness • May 9 '20

Elm

David Wickes • May 9 '20

Elm isn't a language; it's an abstract syntax tree.

Marek Pepke • Feb 11 '21

So is ClojureScript.

Niko Heikkilä • May 8 '20

But what about PureScript for all of us geeks who can't tolerate side-effects in life?

David Wickes • May 8 '20

I only use PurrScript. Because I love cat-egory theory...

DrBearhands • May 9 '20

Congratulations! I didn't know you'd become a father!

David Wickes • May 9 '20

Thank you!

Marco Damaceno • May 8 '20

JScript would be nice!

David Wickes • May 8 '20

JScript would be JavaScript trying to do 90s rap...

Elliot Derhay • May 9 '20

Comment.create("Here, take your like.");
likeCounter.increment();

This Dot Media • May 8 '20

Haha love this!

Andreas Larsson • Jan 18 '21

Well, depending on which language you are writing different options might be valid. For example in Swedish the valid spelling is Javascript because all proper nouns should have a capital letter in the beginning and the rest should be lower case. Other examples are Ikea and Iphone.