JavaScript: JavaScript is the considered the programming language of the web. Executed by a user's web browser as opposed to a web server, making it a client-side language, JavaScript is typically used as a component of a web pages. However, it can also be embedded into HTML documents to create special features in PDF documents, site-specific browers and more. As a result, this programming language is used in a variety of capacities, from game design to the creation of desktop and mobile applications.
JavaScript was developed in 1995 by Brendan Eich, an American computer scientist working at Netscape. Originally hired to apply a programming language called Scheme to a web browser, Eich instead wrote an entirely new language over the course of 10 days. Originally meant to help Netscape compete with Microsoft and other companies on the web, JavaScript was eventually adopted by Microsoft and later made an industry standard by ECMA International. Today, JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages, especially because it can often be used by web authors and other non-professional web programmers. The most recent edition of the ECMA-standard version, 5.1, was released in June 2011.