JCON EUROPE 2023

20 years ago, Java started supporting regular expressions and XML, and JavaScript learned to interact with DOM in IE6 and Netscape. Neanderthals just stopped hunting mammoths after the dot-com bubble burst, while Millennials were mastering the usage of XMLHttpRequest to send SOAP messages, which allowed users to buy philosophical compositions, including “In da Club” and “Chihuahua”. Not to mention that WASM at that time roughly meant Open Watcom Assembler.
Currently, a new Java version is released every six months, and the ECMAScript specification is updated every year. We designate types in TypeSript and run it on the server, and at the same time, there is a JVM implementation in WebAssembly. We write “var” and anonymous functions in Java and define private fields in JS classes.
Let’s have some fun and see how many analogous things have appeared in two languages with similar names that are so often discussed as opposites. The big picture always helps to decide which instrument is better for the tail and which for the trunk.