The Weird Wonderful Web

== ABSTRACT == The web is really something. It started as a system for linking textual information and evolved into a universal computing platform used for almost all digital work and play. And JavaScript, a tiny scripting language meant to sprinkle interactivity onto web pages, grew into the behemoth we all know (and love, I hope). But we didn’t get here in a straight line - far from it! This journey was full of detours and missteps, each with some interesting lore. So let’s celebrate the web by sharing some embarrassing stories from its past and letting them teach us a few lessons for its future. == NOTE FOR THE ORGANIZERS == Most CFP commitees appreciate some extra info, but feel free to skip if it doesn't fit your process :) Things I might cover: - Weird APIs we ended up with and explanations .- the WebSocket upgrade protocol, browser APIs, ridiculous user agent header, a misspelled referer header... - Why browsers parse invalid HTML. - Hyrum's law and DOM quirks becoming permanent API (e.g., document.all being falsy) - Weird JavaScript behaviors and syntax- typeof null, unused reserved words, why the async keyword is necessary... - Famous misnomers - XMLHttpRequest, AJAX... And a lesson on good naming. - Lack of tail recursion in JavaScript, even though it's in the standard. I won't necessarily cover everything listed here, and I will almost certainly cover stuff I haven't listed. But hopefully you get the main idea :)