Brendan Eich: JavaScript, Firefox, Mozilla, and Brave | Lex Fridman Podcast #160

The following is a conversation with Brendan Eich, creator of the JavaScript programming language, co-founder of Mozilla, which created the Firefox browser, and now co-founder and CEO of Brave Software, which has created the Brave browser. Each of these are revolutionary technologies. JavaScript is one of the most widely used and impactful programming languages in the world. Firefox pioneered many browser ideas that we love today, or even take for granted today. And Brave is looking to revolutionize not only the browser, but content creation online and the nature of the internet to make it fundamentally about respecting people's control over their data. Quick mention of our sponsors. The Jordan Harbinger Show, Sambasket meal delivery service, BetterHelp online therapy, and Eight Sleep self-cooling mattress. Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that there's a tension between theory and engineering that I've been thinking a lot about. I tweeted something like, "Good execution is more important than a good idea, but one helps the other." I think the wording of that sucks, but what I mean is a, a good idea is a must, but in my experience, good ideas are in abundance. Good execution, on the other hand, is rare. I think some mix of good timing, good idea, and good execution is essential. Getting that mix right is tough, and (laughs) Brendan somehow, multiple times in his career, did just that. I'm starting to believe it's more art than science, like most interesting things in life. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support me on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter @LexFridman. And now, here's my conversation with Brendan Eich. When did you first fall in love with programming?

I didn't program a lot when I was in high school, but I had a friend who had a Commodore PET. And after we saw Star Wars, he said, "Hey, let's make a, a basic, uh, program that does the Death Star trench run."

(laughs)

And it was just, you know, simple 2D graphics. And I didn't know what I was doing, so I just helped him out, uh, on the math and stuff like that. I was a math and science kid. I was really into, uh, the HP calculators of the early mid-'70s. These were the RPN. They were really strongly built, and as Rik Goldfinger said of gold, "divinely heavy" (laughs) .

(laughs)

There was probably some gold in them, too. Gold metalization. But they were awesome calculators, and they had all the scientific functions, so I was really into that. Um, so I, I aimed toward physics. Um, I was a little late for the, I think the, you know, the 20th century golden age, and I read a lot of science fiction, so I was like, "Yeah, it's on to hyperdrives and warp drives and..." Uh, physics was not going to get there quickly, and I started hacking on computers while I was studying physics as an undergraduate at Santa Clara University. And, um, you know, it... I, I dodged the Fortran bullet because I was in the science department instead of the engineering department, where they still did Fortran, card decks, I think they had an auto collator. But, uh, we were using Pascal, and, uh, I got one of the first portable C compilers, uh, ports to the deck minicomputers we were using, and I, I fell in love with programming just based on, um, you know, procedural abstraction, uh, Pascal, just what now would be considered old school, like, structured programming from the '70s. Um, Niklaus Wirth, the creator of Pascal, was a good writer and a, a good pedagogue, right? He al- always, at ETH, would do these courses where it's like, "Build your own computer."