Why JavaScript's 30-Year-Old Design Flaws Cannot Be Removed

JavaScript was created by Brendan Eich at Netscape in just ten days in 1995, under intense pressure to beat Microsoft in the early browser wars. The rushed timeline forced design compromises that borrowed loosely from Scheme, Self, and Java, leaving behind well-known quirks such as typeof null returning 'object' and inconsistent array sorting. Because the web operates on a strict principle of backwards compatibility, the TC39 standards committee cannot remove these flaws without breaking millions of existing websites that depend on them. Instead, the language evolves by adding new, cleaner opt-in features alongside the old ones, while developers rely on tools like strict mode and linters to avoid legacy pitfalls. The result is a language whose foundational oddities are effectively permanent, a direct consequence of a prototype that was never meant to outlast its original deadline.