JavaScript's Past

Posted on May, 01 2014

JavaScript in its early days was like an emotionally troubled teenager trying to find individuality: It developed its style almost overnight, went through various name changes to get attention, and then sooner or later growing up and finally adopting standards.

Beginnings.

JavaScript was originally created by Brenden Eich, in a mere 10 days around May 1995. The original name of JavaScript was Mocha, chosen by the founder of NetScape, Marc Andreessen. Later followed another name change in September 1995 to LiveScript, then December of the same year upon receiving a trademark license from Sun, the name JavaScript was adopted. Why the name JavaScript? The name JavaScript was chosen due to the popularity of Java during the time. Later in that year, 1996 - 1997 JavaScript was taken by ECMA to lay out a standard specification. After some time, the standard ECMA-262 Ed.1 was now what we know as the implementation of JavaScript.

Horray for a new era!

Currently, JavaScript and HTML/CSS are going through a new cycle in the development of the web. With the introduction of HTML5, CSS3 and Nodejs. With these new standards and technologies, things on the web can have more functionality than ever. And no, don't forget that JavaScript is not Java! Java is a programming language that runs in a Runtime Environment on your desktop. Never forget this.