With hindsight, sure, but was that really obvious in 1995 when JavaScript shipped?

1995 saw Java's first public release. PHP was a CGI-thingie that powered Rasmus' personal homepage. Tcl and Perl was the state of the art of scripting languages. Ruby was released (it would be another four years before it started getting traction outside Japan). The first edition of O'Reilly's "Programming Python" was published in 1996.

ML and LISPs existed. Surely Scheme in the browser would be a better language and implementable in the 10-day window JS had.

Functional programming is barely mainstream today, it certainly wasn't in 1995. Netscape had enough on their plate convincing people that "the web" is a cool thing and they should be on it without driving a programming paradigm change at the same time.

Seriously, it's 20 years ago. You're operating with extreme hindsight.

Does ML force much of a paradigm? Make mutable the default if you want. FWIW I wasn't much of a fan of it in the late 90s either.

COBOLScript. What could go wrong?

Ok, interesting observation--maybe it's extra important to avoid NIH in those situations (trying to launch an enormous open platform). Otherwise feel free to forget that I said JS--it's immaterial to the main point of my question above.