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The many, many, many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade • Buttondown

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This 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. Through these, we've seen the language spread to the Cloud, the edge, Smart TVs, mobile devices, and even microcontrollers. In this article, we'll explore what's driving this diversity, and why no one runtime or engine suffices for all purposes. The first consumer "edge computing" solution was introduced in 2002 by Akamai, who enabled building on the edge using Java and .NET. But it would be a long time before JavaScript would join those languages – for one thing, JavaScript wouldn't be useful as a server-side language until Node.js emerged in 2009, and for another, Node.js wouldn't be employed in a serverless context until AWS Lambda in 2014. It was only with the announcement of Lambda@Edge (in preview from December 2016; released March 2017) that JavaScript would finally be seen on the edge, again run

July 27, 2025 The many, many, many JavaScript runtimes of the last decade This 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. Through these, we've seen the language spread to the Cloud, the edge, Smart TVs, mobile devices, and even microcontrollers. In this article, we'll explore what's driving this diversity, and why no one runtime or engine suffices for all purposes. Edge computing The first consumer "edge computing" solution was introduced in 2002 by Akamai,

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