Before learning anything it is important to have a bit of background of that. Here, I start with the the introduction and the history of javascript and the following posts covers the details.
What is JavaScript
Javascript is a scripting language. At the beginning, it was considered to be the language for the web. But after Ryan Dahl’s invention of Node.js it became the language for both web and server side. Although, Rhino which was developed in 1997 is the first JavaScript engine that runs in non-browser environment Node.js made it widely popular for server side development.
A Brief History
Brendan Eich created JavaScript in 1995 for Netscape in merely 10 days. The scripting language was designed and developed for Netscape’s vividly popular web browser Netscape Navigator. The language was first named as Mocha and then LiveScript. The language got it’s confusing name JavaScript from Netscape in order to make it popular with the language Java which was heavily well known at that time. In reality JavaScript has almost no resemblance to Java except a little similarity in the syntax.
ECMAScript and JavaScript
After the introduction of JavaScript, Netscape Navigator was a step ahead in the browser market. Soon, other browsers implemented their own version of JavaScript, with different names and syntax. It became increasingly difficult for the developers to develop websites for all browsers. After a while they all agreed to use the same language for the browsers. But as you have already realized, proper maintenance and support for the language was missing. Netscape submitted JavaScript to European Computer Manufacturers Association (ECMA) for standardization. As a result, the association implemented the standard and named it ECMAScript on 1997. At the beginning, it was only used by JavaScript. Now, several languages (JScript, ActionScript) are using this standard. I think, now it is clear that, JavaScript and ECMAScript are closely related but not the same thing.
JavaScript is mostly used in browsers and NodeJs. These are the most common hosts or environments. Usually, these environments add APIs to the language. But, these APIs are not part of ECMAScript and can differ based on host.
Javascript Today
Javascript is considered to be the most used programming language now and it is no more a scripting-language. A series of JavaScript frameworks and libraries (Ember, Angular, React, Vue) enabled developer to develop complex UI easily. On the other hand, increasingly popular NodeJs runtime environment enabled developers to develop backend of an application. Beyond web, it is possible to develop native mobile application using JavaScript now.
Wrap Up
I hope this article was able to give you a good understanding of the history of JavaScript and ECMAScript. It is obvious that this widely used and popular programming language will be there in future.