This has been a big year for JavaScript. New, fast engines have tested their legs. Libraries have matured. With the ECMAScript 5 draft proposal, the language is growing. However, the language remains largely in exile, to only be used in Web browsers. This year has marked a resurgence of efforts to make JavaScript useful outside the browser. This was patently obvious at this year's first European JavaScript conference, jsconf.eu.
There have been a variety of JavaScript platforms for programming outside the browser since 1996, starting with Netscape's server-side offerings. A system called Helma (best known in Austria) has been around almost as long. In 2007, AppJet provided a service (now discontinued) for creating and hosting server-side JavaScript applications. Aptana offers an IDE for front-to-back JavaScript Web applications called Jaxer. Through each generation of Web development, JavaScript did not measure up against Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, Java, or other alternatives for general-purpose programming.
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