Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave | Lex Fridman Podcast
Brendan Eich is the creator of JavaScript and co-founder of Mozilla and Brave. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Brendan's Twitter: / brendaneich
Brendan's Website: brendaneich.com
Brave browser: brave.com
PODCAST INFO:
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Full episodes playlist: • Lex Fridman Podcast
Clips playlist: • Lex Fridman Podcast Clips
OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:53 - History of early programming languages
6:46 - Physics needs more experiments and less theory
11:23 - JavaScript origin story
36:16 - JavaScript was created in 10 days
45:56 - Marc Andreessen
49:13 - Internet Explorer
52:57 - Evolution of JavaScript
58:43 - Javascript standardization
1:04:33 - TypeScript
1:07:04 - JavaScript ecosystem
1:10:14 - HTML5
1:13:46 - Making JavaScript fast
1:22:56 - JavaScript is the most popular language in the world
1:33:22 - Advice for programmers
1:39:19 - Browser wars
1:45:49 - Firefox
2:07:32 - Brave
2:20:32 - Basic Attention Token
2:45:35 - California
2:54:47 - Mortality
2:55:53 - Legacy
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Here are the timestamps. Please check out our sponsors to support this podcast. 0:00 - Introduction & sponsor mentions: - The Jordan Harbinger Show: jordanharbinger.com/lex/ - Sun Basket: sunbasket.com/lex and use code LEX to get $35 off - BetterHelp: betterhelp.com/lex to get 10% off - Eight Sleep: www.eightsleep.com/lex and use code LEX to get special savings 1:53 - History of early programming languages 6:46 - Physics needs more experiments and less theory 11:23 - JavaScript origin story 36:16 - JavaScript was created in 10 days 45:56 - Marc Andreessen 49:13 - Internet Explorer 52:57 - Evolution of JavaScript 58:43 - Javascript standardization 1:04:33 - TypeScript 1:07:04 - JavaScript ecosystem 1:10:14 - HTML5 1:13:46 - Making JavaScript fast 1:22:56 - JavaScript is the most popular language in the world 1:33:22 - Advice for programmers 1:39:19 - Browser wars 1:45:49 - Firefox 2:07:32 - Brave 2:20:32 - Basic Attention Token 2:45:35 - California 2:54:47 - Mortality 2:55:53 - Legacy
Kotlin vs Java?
I have been advocating for Brendan to visit your podcast since forever as well as recommending that you get verified as a publisher. Which is why I am baffled by the fact that you uploaded the show without getting verified first, if there ever was a reason for people to drop you beaucoup bucks they earned by using a fancy new browser, it's this! Do it, now! Oh and: great session as always, it was exactly as interesting as I expected it to be.
As a lover of technology and science, you are greatly appreciated Lex!
Lex, an interview Gilad Bracha about Newspeak and computing history at Sun would be well worth it.
Does someone have a link to the Times article mentioned at the end? (The one about the recent election) @Lex Fridman
1:54:09 I left out Ben Goodger (who took over as Firefox owner at 0.6) and Jason Kersey (who Ben told me originated the “Firefox” name) from the informal mozilla/browser => Phoenix team.
Great interview! Thank you for all your inventions. I've been coding in JavaScript for 20 years. I love it because it and the web are everywhere. I use Firefox and Brave every day. What do you think the future of JS is? I know Doug Crockford has written about this. Is JS a "good" language now? What would you change? Has it "finished" changing? Is a language ever "finished"? Can JS be 1 language for both beginners and pros? Small and large programs? I know VBScript in the browser failed, but will browsers ever natively support multiple languages? I used to do a lot of Visual Basic/VBA/VBScript, and I think you cited VB as an influence in other interviews. If you could do it all again, forget Java, forget management and marketing, what would it look like? Scheme? Parentheses? LISP frightens me. Sorry for all the questions.
2:10:25 Lou Montulli, not "lumon truly" like the transcript says. @2:11:44 is "Tom Paquin".
Did you deliberately drop so many names in this interview? Giving shout outs to old colleagues?
@@Sun0fABeach "Deliberately" as opposed to what? I find it hard to imagine he said anything in this interview by accident, judging by the fact that he at least twice during the interview prefixed what he said with the equivalent of "I can say this (previously secret information) because it has already been said by others in other interviews or books".
@@gabrielsroka Browers already support multiple languages. This started with compile-to-JS hit languages such as CoffeeScript, but now with webassembly.org, languages have an even better compiler target. github.com/jashkenas/coffeescript/wiki/List-of-languages-that-compile-to-JS
Erratum at 1:14:32 - Luke Wagner and other Mozilla wasm and rust talent left Mozilla for Fastly. I found out after recording this.
Thank you Brendan, I learnt a lot listening to you
Thanks for sharing Brendan
Listening to this podcast has got me once again excited to be in the Computer Science Field
This conversation felt rare and rich. As a one man developer team I appreciated it deeply !
Thanks Brendan! I've been a huge supporter of yours ever since I heard you on the Epicenter podcast.
Being a software engineer I am more inclined to these type of podcast guests instead of non-science and engineering backgrounds. Given you want to cater to wider audiences, keep bringing these type of guests once in a blue moon for us computer nerds. 😄 Great podcast as always
Drop your github lol
+1
im fullware developer. software + hardware.
Vaporware Dev here. the dot com boom is NOT dead . keep the dream alive.
Absolutely, this was a fantastic episode. The web is now old enough for these types of guests to not only bring technical insights but also historical curiosities of how things came to be
This dude is freaking awesome lol, 40 minutes in and he's still blasting CS history at like a hundred miles an hour
I wish there was more speakers like this. So many CS speakers just cover the same 101 knowledge or go so deep into it few can follow.
One of the reasons why is because he has given a lot of talks on the subject. An other who is good with giving history is Douglas Crockford maybe best known for creating JSON and the book "JavaScript: The Good Parts"
@@autohmae Yeah this interview is just so deep with the tech scene from the 90s, very interesting to listen to. Thanks for the recommendation with Crockford, I'll try and look into that
And now he is in the comments blasting addendums
@@ghp_aTxcGoQueOBM0Jlyx1oMMgcPe 🥳👍
I am not a programmer and went along on this ride, comprehending just 30%, but deeply appreciating 100% of intellect in action.
Same! Makes me want to dive into these mysterious aspects of our tech world!
I am a programmer and i understood 10%
I've always been told by people around me that I'm "smart" but hearing this guy talk about building JS in 10 days and whatnot, that's what smart means. It's fascinating to see someone talk about feats and abilities that you will simply never be capable of. I wish I had a mind like this, that can solve practical problems at that speed.
Man im 20 minutes in and it might as well be a foreign language. I love Lex but this one isnt for me lol
@@kiyoaki1985 Plus he's a walking encyclopedia on the tech world. Mindblowing.
This guy is singlehandedly the reason myself and so many other developers have had great careers. I started with JS in 2000 and used Flash (Actionscript) for many years as well. Now I teach JS to other people. 10 days people. He had 10 days to design it! Since then (thankfully) there's been so many improvements to the language and the engines. Big fat THANK YOU to Brendan Eich!
Gratitude!
Is this JS that is going to replace VB Macros in excel? has the work started, could you do everything that VB macro does.
Yeah, as Bernie Bros complain about the rich, I'm thankful the rich (Brendan Eich) created JavaScript so I can be employed today as a software developer.
@@dragonore2009 You really have to make everything about politics?
@@dragonore2009 Remember when Bernie was against the millionaires and billionaires? That was just before he became a milionaire, now he's only against the bilionaires (till he becomes rich enough then he's only against the trilionaires I guess)
I’m a scientist, not a programmer, but these interviews with creators of languages and computational methods are more interesting than those with philosophers and scientists. I think that society has overemphasized science and philosophy and neglected mathematics and engineering. I like this podcast because it helps redress the balance. Nice interview!
This is true
good point
Why not start programming since you enjoy it so much? It's never too late to join the party 🦾🥳
@@bobanmilisavljevic7857 I do some programming, but it's not my main field of expertise
I am not a CS person but these are the types of content/information I didn't know I needed. Why wouldn't we want to hear directly from the people that created revolutionary technologies that changed our world? I think we've become so desensitized to the wonders of technology that we don't pause to appreciate them. Big thank you to all CS people that are contributing to the advancement of the future of our digital world.
I understand about 1% of what Brendan talks about, but I give him 100% respect for bringing us Firefox and Brave! ♥ He deserves some sort of award.
@@techquickie1656 Hi Lex, ty for your reply.. Can you explain the number sequence you wrote?
@@drumstick74 This is someone impersonating for less than pleasant reasons. Click through to their profile and report them.
@@ColbyARussell Yeah I can see it isn't Lex. Why do people make fake profiles? Don't they have a life?
And most importantly JavaScript.. imo
I’ve been using Brave almost exclusively for over a year now on desktop and mobile. I love it.
Brave is great, I also use Firefox just for their dev tools.
@Weghweh Hwewehwhe my DNA is 99+% the same as a chimpanzee. Cardi B contains many musical notes that can be found in Bach or Mozart. Hope this makes the point clear for anyone reading this comment.
i tried it a year ago i think, felt slow and encountered a lot of bugs with it. I'm using firefox daily for web development, for several reasons. Still, I find firefox to be very ugly UI/UX-wise, and it's laggier than chrome. Can't help but go back to chrome for regular use. :/
@@albincederblad4054 bruh, Im using brave for 2 years and its getting even better with every update
Same although the latest update is a bit slower.. I’ve got a ton of BAT anyone notice the price drop recently?
It's incredibly encouraging to see there are still people fighting back against big tech, doubly so someone as experienced as Brendan who's been going up against the giants since the days of NetScape. Lex, you gotta have this guy back on soon!
While I spent 5 days on a SPA application that uses JavaScript (React) this gentleman spent 10 days in creating the entire language, just unbeliavable. I feel like a bacteria compared to that man.
Well, it's not *entire* language. Especially not since ecmascript 2015. But he's a genius for sure.
For me, as complete beginner who's just beginning to learn about programming at the basic foundational level. This is one of the most interesting conversations I've ever seen on any platform. Best podcast to date imo.
One of the best interviews I've ever watched, never watched through something for 3 hours feeling inspired and engaged by 2 human beings having a conversation.
Im a hardware engineer transitioning to software development. Its so good to hear the history and background of these languages. I started with JavaScript. Great content keep up the good work!
i recommended this guest like 100 episodes back finally
I am an accountant/finance guy by trade and now do online personal training... I have absolutely 0 invested in this subject (at least directly)... yet I find myself completely intrigued by this convo and grateful humans like Brendan (and Lex) exist. I love when people speak passionately about what they love. It gives me life. GIves me hope
I am a JavaScript developer. Thanks for my career!
This taught me more about the internet/programming than anything I've ever built, watched, listened to, and participated in throughout my entire life. I absolutely loved it!
Man I subscribed to you 2 weeks ago and i'm addicted to your podcast. I replaced whole time listening to music with your podcasts and by far i'm loving it!
His mind is sharp like a sword.
*Fantastic*, fascinating, history, straight from the horse's mouth!!! It's wonderful how it all came together, so satisfying to watch it (JS) evolve. Thank you, Brendan, for this amazing language :) And thanks, Lex, for talking with Brendan - for me, this is one of the best podcasts in your series!
19:51 "I could have told Netscape 'I can't do this, it's too rushed', and it would have been Visual Basic Script." This made me like JS much more than I did before. Thank you Brendan for saving us 🙏
As someone who's in a mentorship program for software engineering and learning Javascript on a daily basis, I started drooling when I saw this in my feed! Please continue to bring more guests on like this Lex! Thanks Brendan for all of your contributions to the word of Compsci.
1:27:10 “C++/Java is like Wall Street and JavaScript is more like wallstreetbets” Love it! Great interview!
almost spilled my coffee after hearing that lol
This dude is based af. Great episode💙💚💜
Generally I enjoy all conversations Lex has but this episode in particular is something different filled with inspiration and determination I would recommend it to everyone that works with technology. This is my first time posting also so thank you Lex for the amazing content you put out there and the amazing guest you have.
000p0p
This video had taught me more about dating than I expected! The whole idea of being the first, even if you suck, is what will give you evolutionary advantage. Then improve later
Only 30 minutes in and I can already tell this will be a podcast I'll have to continue to come back to. There's so much to glean from this. Such a great conversation! Thank you Lex and Brendan!
Wow, what an underappreciated interviewee. Netscape, history of Mozilla, C, Rust, JavaScript, Python.... This guy just has a wealth of knowledge and seems like a great guy.
I think this has been my favourite interview so far. Very refreshing to hear someone from Silicon Valley have an informed understanding of the true roots of America. This has me very interested in contributing to Brave.
Hegel, Shakespeare, Plato and Aristotle, this man is not just intelligent, but cultured! And charismatic to boot... Eich is everything Zuckerberg, Gates, Bezos, et al are not. Notice how he fondly gives credit and praise to everyone he worked with in his career, he didn't just build the internet, he built friendships. Cheers to this guy
Flash played a role in filling the UI gap that Javascript, CSS and HTML5 ultimately filled. Some great web application UIs were created in Flash because you could mimic the GUI of a desktop app, but arguably more elegantly, and in a browser.
This was an incredible conversation, powerful.
This is by far my favorite interview. Please have Brendan on again.
This guy is quite amazing. Such honest intellect with great purpose and vision. I will definitely be a supporter and investor of Brave and BAT.
Working as a programmer for the web for 22 years now, it’s great to get the insights from you, the source Brendan!! Working on a large scale web app now using pure JS, ReactJS, and MySQL, while listening to this. I love how JS has been so embraced and leveraged everywhere.
Yo Lex you could verify your KZhead channel with Brave Rewards so you can earn BAT :)
I feel like that interview could have gone on a few more hours 👍
Appreciate that you make this conversation comprehensible for someone who is not a tech person. "Economics was always compromised by politics"... Talk about wars and the tech era... Interesting, awesome!
This is so much fun. At the turn of the century I worked at a big accounting firm with a massive IT practice that dwarfed the traditional accounting departments. My boss was one of my best friends it was all good. The firm had been one of the first IBM business partners and the partner in charge at the firm basically invented batch processing on ibm mainframes in the late 1960s. I was hired to learn lotus notes which we ran on AS400 or iSeries which our firm had been the main beta tester for Silver Lake back in the day. At the time I could not imagine WE could not imagined that anything could out perform lotus notes on the latest ISeries which could RUN ANYTHING it even had a PC server on a card in the machine. First lotus did Java which the AS400 was great for. But then they added all the web browser stuff including JavaScript which rocked our world . We could just put little snips of code that could move mountains on the AS400, but just cutting and pasting tiny bits of code into a box in notes. Anyway that is what makes this so fun. Thank you!
I learned so much. I agree that more engineering guys with knowledge this deep should be on the pod more frequently. Hearing the history of software development is fascinating.
Thank you very much for inviting Brendan and conducting this brilliant interview, Lex. I deeply enjoyed the conversation and learned a lot of interesting facts.
I have listened a number of interviews of Brendan Eich on different podcasts and I find this one to be the best... a really awesome dive to history of the web. Thank you Brendan and Lex!
I worked at Silicon Graphics UK in the mid 90s in its heyday. During my era we bought Cray. Best job I ever had.
kzhead.info/sun/gs-fp9uve56vl6s/bejne.html
If you told me before listening I would be thoroughly engrossed in someone talking about Javascript for 3 hours I would not have believed you. Really engaging guest and as usual Lex allows them to guide the conversation themselves. Really enjoyed it.
This is required viewing for anyone who programs. Any and all levels. Brendan weaves history, theory, and technology together so well. And Lex asks all the right questions.
💳This was a great walkthrough of browser history! Makes you look at the browser with a different perspective and appreciation. As always Lex gives you the goods.
Really interesting conversation about software and languages we use everyday. Loved the energy Brendan brought to the table.
I enjoyed every minutes of this. I always say that JavaScript is King. and thanks Brendan Eich for gifting us this precious resource.
I immediately downloaded Brave and proceeded to watch it on this browser. Lex Fridman needs to verify himself on the syatem :P
Hahaha I did the same
Best episode yet. Brendan is such a gem. Truly a modern day legend.
I just switched to brave recently. I really like it so far.👍🙌
This is fascinating, one of my favorites so far! A nice trip down memory lane over my career as a web and software developer.
Best talk I’ve heard in a very long time.
I really enjoy this from a post-learning standpoint. I've been around as a software user since early 80s, and have lived through all this change. I like this... the backstory. Excellent contribution.
These talks are just getting better and better! Watching these more than Netflix.
Sir Brendan, you made my whole career, Thank you!
I've been using Brave for about 1 year and it is now my main browser, it's great. I wrote a simple website for a client a few weeks ago and decided to use no Javascript libraries (just plain Javascript) as an experiment to see how it is now on its own. It really was fine, maybe not super succinct but it's come a long way since the sad times of IE6. It basically does what you would expect from it, without the mental gymnastics or exhaustive typing that used to be involved. My only gripe is the fetch API, for the simple task of getting the raw contents of a URL request it feels a bit over complicated. JS classes are fantastic though, what a change that makes.
That was great from start to finish. The man is sharp as a whip and not dull. I could even listen to a 6 hour interview with him.
I switched to Brave a while ago and I haven't missed Chrome at all. It even imported all of my bookmarks and passwords so was an easy switch.
Absolutely love Brave on both mobile and desktop, Brendan is the king of the web
Programmer : 0=="0" JS : true Programmer: 0==[] JS :true Programmer : Ok so "0"==[] right? Makes sense to me.. JS : false Programmer : GET OUT!..
Just imagine how many "=" characters over the wire Brendan would have saved by just saying "no" to those guys.
I don't know...we do have this operator: ===
Which is why === exist
Thanks for sharing this interview. Informative and what an interesting history of the browsers!
Thanks for this amazing episode Lex! Loved every minute of it! Invite Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP creator) some time in near future please :) In fact, would love to hear from all language inventors.
I couldn’t finish it in one go, but I finally finished it all. WOW, this was a fantastic and informative podcast. Thank you both very much for this.
Would be interesting to hear you talk with Jonathan Blow about his JAI programming language.
The computer science episodes are my absolute favourites. Awesome stuff.
Please, keep bringing this kind of diversity. Excellent guest. Excellent interview
This is awesome! I am doing a project for my Programming Languages class on JavaScript!! Part 1 Historic Background! Thank You Lex & Brendan!
just came back to watch this ep. somehow I missed it. I love how straightforward Brendan's descriptions and stories are.
I was elated when I saw the notification. Been waiting for this a long time.
A based Christian man! He can school you on the meaning of life. :]
If you knew the answer was 42, and asked Brendan Eich to define the question, he would respond with a JS program which defines the meaning of life as a 26 dimentional string theory. 😜
Brave is AMAZING!
They need to make money somehow. Either that or selling your data
@@Quack6078 in a previous generation you'd have stated: «I want my car to be just a "car", not having to do anything with electricity»
@@Quack6078 mozilla gets millions of dollars from google each year, firefox is doing nothing except loosing money. Google pays them bc firefox has google as a default search engine and because google can argue they don't have a browser monopoly in court. Librefox is what firefox should have been
@@Quack6078 firefox is not self-sustainable, it has no business model. they're grasping at straws with questionable monetization models and doing massive layoffs just to keep the shit afloat. the only reason they're not in the hole yet is because of google, and even that's only till 2023. do you think google will extend the deal with a dying product ? friendly reminder that mozilla is only getting a third of what apple is for the same deal. do you think mozilla will build a profitable business in a couple years ? or do you think they're kicking the bucket ? it's not as easy as "just being a browser". your ideology is what put mozilla into the gutter that it is currently in. but of course if you have some magical way to keep the lights on without any inconvenience, speak up.
@@Quack6078 Ads are disabled by default. You have to actively choose to turn them on if you decide you want the money. Other unwanted features like privacy?
great to see the creator of JavaScript it's my favorite programming language
This is a jewel!!! Had no idea Brendan was the source. Long live JS!!!
Just saw this episode & installed Brave right away! I like it!
Fantastic interview, even though it's 3 hours I easily could've listened for a few more. I've been using Brave as my daily driver for several years now and absolutely love it. Lex, you need to get verified so I can tip some BAT your way.
Loved it, the end was especially great, hearing the concept of cookies and XSS explained so simply is very interesting
This is a gift for posterity. Thank you Lex Fridman! Killer interview
Brendan seems like both a super bright and super likeable guy. Great interview, as always!
Lex I fkkn love you man. You're whole vibe makes me feel better. You ARE spreading love and knowledge. Wish there were more like you. Respect
Great conversation. Highly recommend Brave.
This was one of the best episodes.
I did some programming in high school and college and even though I didn’t really enjoy it personally I love the history and story behind it all, great podcast as always
This brings back too many memories of dealing with early web and Windows development. Delphi Pascal, Internet Explorer, Xml, Java, Actionscript. Typescript, jQuery. It really is a living organism, or rather a species that leaves a trail of dead standards and legacy code. Flash is dead along with the cat piano app I wrote in it. R.I.P No mention of the prototype paradigm is surprising. Now there's Solidity which inherits the javascript syntax so it'll never die.
this guy is an OG for real alot of knowledge
Brilliant discussion again. I did not know Brendan, but have to say I really like his take on all the topics discussed on this podcast. Need to take Javascript on my to-learn list from now, also downloaded Brave just now =)
Thanks Lex! That was a great video, really like your great introduction about the guest. Brendan is an amazing creator, a big fan of Firefox and Brave, really like the novel visions Brave has for giving credit and rewarding content creators.
Fantastic insights into Javascipt and the history of the Web!
Bring him on for round 2!
An incredible interview. Lex really knows code and was able to ask excellent questions. JavaScript is such an awesome language.
This guy knows everything math, biology, physics, electronics, computer science
Oh wow as I web developer I am thrilled to listen to anything Brendan Eich has to say! Hitting the like button in advance
Great talk on Brave and BAT Thank you note: please verify your YT account!
why?
Agreeeeeee
Great interview! Not even an hour in but great for those of us who lived and worked through these times to go through such a great compilation of the evolution of the technology. Wonderful!!
As a web developer, I find this episode awesome and extremely useful. Usually technological stuff on this podcast is centered around AI and theoretical CS, but applying that same thinking to web development was great to hear.
I am watching this on Brave, I write JavaScript at work, so yes I am very interested in this conversation
What an amazing episode specially as an inspiring programmer. Also it's lovely to see Lex wear the watch Joe Rogan gifted him.