JavaScript

In the early years of the World Wide Web, there was only one web browser with support for a graphical user interface—Mosaic, released in 1993. The lead developers of Mosaic soon started the Netscape corporation and released a more polished browser called Netscape Navigator in 1994.

The web was a very different place in these early years, and web pages could only display static content. Netscape wanted to change this and decided to add a scripting language to its Navigator. At first, they looked at two options for how to achieve this. One was to collaborate with Sun Microsystems and use the Java programming language. The other option was to let the newly hired Brendan Eich embed the Scheme programming language into the browser.

The decision was a compromise between the two. Brendan Eich was tasked with creating a new language, but its syntax should be closely related to Java and less like Scheme. The language was first named LiveScript, and that was the name it was released under in 1995.

Since Java was the brand new language at the time, the name was changed to JavaScript so it could get more attention. The similarity in names between the two languages has led to much confusion over the years, especially among people who are not so familiar with programming.

Here are some quick facts about JavaScript:

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