July 27, 2025The many, many, many JavaScript runtimes of the last decadeThis last decade has seen an inundation of new JavaScript runtimes (and engines in equal measure), enabling us to run JavaScript in all manner of contexts with precise fitness for task. It goes to show that venture capital needn't be a lure to develop a JavaScript runtime; sometimes people just want to run JavaScript on a device no matter what. This is an interesting line of history, as – all being Mozilla or Oracle projects – these three may be the only JavaScript runtimes rightfully allowed to use the JavaScript trademark (pending Deno vs. Oracle). JavaScript for Automation (JXA) [archive] (2014): Apple's JavaScript runtime based on JavaScriptCore that includes a full JavaScript projection for the (Objective-C-based) macOS SDK. (2014): Apple's JavaScript runtime based on JavaScriptCore that includes a full JavaScript projection for the (Objective-C-based) macOS SDK.