In May 1995, Brendan Eich was hired to put Scheme in the browser. Netscape's marketing team had other plans: make it look like Java, don't let it compete with Java, and ship it yesterday. Ten days later, the prototype was done. The design was, in Eich's words, "frozen by necessity."
That frost never thawed. The language now runs on 98.8% of websites. Every architectural swing since, from server-rendered pages to SPAs to React Server Components, plays out on top of it. TypeScript, used by 78% of professional developers in 2026, exists to catch what ten days couldn't finish. It compiles down to JavaScript. The ratchet clicked in 1995. Everything since is sediment.