What's the difference?

re: What's the difference?

ben — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 01:35:00 GMT

Heres a similar question. Using classic ASP, I can specify my Page Language will be VBScript, JScript, or JavaScript... and maybe others.

In that case, there's no difference between Jscript and Javascript, right?

re: What's the difference?

Eric Lippert — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 03:05:00 GMT

Correct. ASP, IE, etc, will use JScript when you specify language=Javascript, ECMAScript, etc. They're just aliases for JScript.

re: What's the difference?

Mike Walsh — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 08:46:00 GMT

To which I can only say that once an American girl came up to my and said.

"Hi I'm randy"

re: What's the difference?

Louis Parks — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 09:16:00 GMT

"I usually ask them right back what the difference between English and German is..."

Lol!

re: What's the difference?

bryan — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 10:26:00 GMT

bad response, given that english is a germanic language.

' Remember, JScript and Javascript are languages independent of the browser object model. '
it's amazing how many people have a problem with this.

Browser differences

Nick Fitzsimons — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 14:50:00 GMT

"If you are looking for differences between the IE and Netscape browser object models..."

There are detailed explanations of the differences between the various browser DOM implementations in "Dynamic HTML: The Definitive Reference (2nd edition)", and there's also some useful discussions of the finer points in "JavaScript and DHTML Cookbook", both by Danny Goodman and published by O'Reilly. HTH.

re: What's the difference?

Eric Lippert — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:14:00 GMT

> bad response, given that english
> is a germanic language.

Ot's in keeping with the analogy. Modern German and modern English are both descendents of ancient germanic languages. Javascript and Java are both descendants of the ancient language C.

re: What's the difference?

Peter B — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:16:00 GMT

>>> write a series of unit tests

Eric, you talk about unit testing JScript code?? Any tool you could recommend for this?

re: What's the difference?

AndrewSeven — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:14:00 GMT

LOL
I think there is something implied in the "all the way" that precedes "home".

Mike ,
Was she randy or Randy , or both?
Did you give her a ride or just a ride home?

I'm thinking that maybe there is a way to apply some Test Driven priciples to PMs, mine want to "install" everything.

The simplest thing possible.
The difference between JavaScript and JScript is "ava".

re: What's the difference?

Eric Lippert — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:21:00 GMT

Well, as you might deduce from my earlier article (Thin to my Chagrin), it's my opinion that if your program is so complicated that it needs lots of unit tests, that maybe JScript isn't the right language for you.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that people _do_ develop large systems in JScript, and that they should be tested... but unfortunately I'm unaware of any unit test system designed specifically for JScript.

re: What's the difference?

Dave Anderson — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:23:00 GMT

"'Remember, JScript and Javascript are languages independent of the browser object model.'
it's amazing how many people have a problem with this."

I am one of them.

JavaScript is a Netscape product, and Netscape's own documentation differentiates between client-side and server-side JavaScript on the basis of native objects. Netscape's client-side JavaScript reference explicitly includes DOM objects, whereas Microsoft keeps DOM and JScript apart.

If JavaScript is "independent of the browser object model", how is this explained?
http://devedge.netscape.com/library/manuals/2000/javascript/1.3/reference/document.html

re: What's the difference?

Eric Lippert — Fri, 27 Feb 2004 18:34:00 GMT

> If JavaScript is "independent of the browser object model", how is this explained?

You beat me to it. I was just about to comment that a major reason for this confusion is the Netscape documentation.

Now, I don't work for Netscape so this is a conjecture -- my guess is that the language was developed at netscape by the browser team, and was initially tightly integrated into the browser. That explains why there are methods in Javascript that assume that the language is embedded in HTML, and it explains why the documentation is tightly integrated with the browser documentation. But like I said, that's just a guess.

At Microsoft, we realized that the language would be useful in contexts outside of the browser, and so kept them separate from day one. In fact, the browser team and the script team were in completely separate divisions of the company.

There are pros and cons of each approach. The pro is obviously that the language is useful in multiple hosts -- WSH, ASP, etc -- and the con is that things like the memory manager and security system are not as tightly integrated into the browser as one might like.

When it came time to standardize the language, we made sure that the ECMA specification calls out that the language is independent of the browser object model.

re: What's the difference?

Peter Torr — Sun, 29 Feb 2004 07:30:00 GMT

Gotta love all those HTML-centric methods off the String prototype :-)

re: What's the difference?

Keith Gaughan — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 15:44:00 GMT

As an irishman, I can tell you that "ride" means "have sex" here. Ergo, what he accidently said was that he had sex with the girl. It's not offensive, by the way.

re: What's the difference?

Keith Gaughan — Mon, 01 Mar 2004 15:45:00 GMT

That's also Hiberno-English as opposed to British English.

re: What's the difference?

Nathan Sokalski — Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:18:25 GMT

I think that when people ask for the differences between JavaScript and JScript they basically want a list/table showing the equivelant property in the other (for example, event.srcElement in JScript and event.target in JavaScript). There are a number of these that are sometimes hard to remember, and having all of them in the same place would be one of the most useful references I have found in a long time.

re: What's the difference?

Steve Green — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 19:34:35 GMT

Well, i just read this, and its still relevant today. So well done on writing something that stands up well.

PS English, is not a germanic language its a combination of many languages, Latin, Greek, French, Norsk et all. In fact that's probably the reason for its success as a language, its flexibility.

There is no such thing as American Standard English, or British Standard English, there is just English. But the language accepts and allows barstardisations, such as the Americans and others do to the language.

Finally I would like to congratulate you on spelling "Behaviour" right.

PS. Just remembered that my English teacher, once said that the American adjustments to English were probably done to make the spelling easier. Which was probable due to the "give me your poor etc."

I think I feel the need for a dissertation ;-)