Everyone use to notice the old war veteran that sat on the corner. His uniform was tatty and he’s always be spouting about his heyday with lines like “Don’t you remember my role in the first browser war” and “If it wasn’t for me VBScript would be the language of choice of the browser!”. We’d look at him with pity, throw a few dollars his way and carry on with our day but never really got to know him. People who weren’t from around here would come by occasionally and notice our friend and look on bemused, wondering why we put up with him.
As the years went by we’d still see him sitting on his corner, but gradually he was looking less dishevelled. We still threw him money and chuckled to ourselves when he’d say “You’re not the only one who does this, everyone listens to me, I’m the most popular out there”. I mean who could really take the guy seriously? We’d put up with him for years now, we knew some of his quirks but we never really paid him the time of day unless we wanted to get lost in pain and suffering.
Then one day he was gone; there was no dishevelled old man sitting on our corner in tatty military gear. We felt sad, had our old friend passed away at the end of the first decade in the 21st century? Should we have paid more attention to him; maybe actually loved him? In reflection maybe he wasn’t so crazy; maybe he did have a point; maybe there really was a time when his uniform sparkled and we’d have looked at him with awe.
But then we noticed someone looking at us. We turned to see a proud looking man in a shiny new military uniform and as we looked longer we noticed that it wasn’t some stranger looking at us but it was our old friend JavaScript. He was now sober, he’d been given a shave, a shiny new uniform and an array of new armaments. But what was most important was that he was looking for action.
He saw us looking back at him, he smiled and shouted “I’m ready for round two, let’s get this browser war started”.
And with a quiet dignity he wandered off to help us fight the next generation of wars.