Perl, Ruby, Python, Javascript / ecmascript, PHP are all similar in the sense of being open source, open documentation, multi-platform, etc.

Perl has
Ruby has
Python has
PHP has

Is there a "home" for javascript in the same sense as these other languages? When I say "home" I mean the go-to place for official documentation, specifications, source code of the language, examples, etc.

Perl, Ruby, Python, Javascript / ecmascript, PHP are all similar in the sense of being open source, open documentation, multi-platform, etc.

Perl has http://www.perl
Ruby has http://www.ruby-lang
Python has http://www.python
PHP has http://php

Is there a "home" for javascript in the same sense as these other languages? When I say "home" I mean the go-to place for official documentation, specifications, source code of the language, examples, etc.

• javascript
• reference

3 Answers 3

There's “JavaScript” the Mozilla-specific scripting language, for which the nearest to a home would probably be MDC, in particular the Core reference — though this has not been kept up-to-date with newer language developments, sadly.

And then there's ECMAScript, the standardised language that grew out of early Netscape work on JavaScript, and which is the basis for Mozilla's modernised JavaScript, IE's JScript, and the implementations in Opera, V8 (Chrome) and Squirrelfish (Safari), not to mention Flash's ActionScript.

This is driven by ECMA TC39 which produces the ECMA-262 standard. As a pure standards group, their materials are dry, unfriendly, and not really a suitable ‘home’ site at all. But if you want official that's all there is.

There is a real gap here for a user-readable doc site that covers standard ECMAScript, rather each vendor's own extended quirky version of it. (The canonical ECMA-262-5 is quite unreadable, even by the standards of standards documents.)

A very good place is https://developer.mozilla/en/JavaScript - they have tons of documentation there.

I will get burnt at the stake for this link, but for the 60%+ internet users out there who are using Internet Explorer (still), the MSDN reference is actually well documented.

It's the home of Javascript in the same way Simon Cowell is an authority on music though.