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Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

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Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#81

Post by ChrisRR »

acdha wrote: post #60
overkill28 wrote: post #36

I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterpris…

Marketing. Java was The Next Big thing and they wanted to jump on board that bandwagon. The direct integration wasn’t very common but a lot of the JavaScript objects had similar names (toString, etc.) and JS was commonly explained as a sort of junior relationship. Edit: expanding my not very common claim — I first started using JavaScript when it was called LiveScript in Netscape betas, the second non-static website…

It's very odd, if someone nowadays called their language CSharpScript, they'd get slapped with a C&D

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#82

Post by toyg »

flohofwoe wrote: post #5

Nothing technically wrong with Java and JS of course, but this terrible PR piece which desperately tries to pitch Java as an integral part of the web, going even as far as naming an innocent scripting language for web browsers JAVA script truly demonstrates that the mid-to-end-90's were the dark age of computing (at least the corporate side).

It was actually a fairly exciting time...? OOP had really just broken into the mainstream (with Java, the first OOP to really take off) and would go on to become ubiquitous, spawning tons of little new languages (including Python). There were multiple vendors pushing VB-like products, some arguably better than MS itself, giving high levels of productivity (who some argue have never been achieved since). PCs had dramatically democratized access, now anyone could build their own tools without having to beg for server time, and sysadmin on Windows was so loose that one could typically get away with anything (yes, virus bad etc etc, but it was still a fun ride). Desktops had just become a standard feature of every white-collar job and everyone was busy trying to make sense of them; the smart folks made millions selling line-of-business apps. And then the internet arrived and everything had to be re-done as web-based (hello Perl and ASP), plus tons of intranet portals that were horrible to use but fun to make, so to speak.

Maybe it's because I was 20 back then, but there was a sense of fun and exploration in most computing that is somewhat missing in this age of smart-everything, JS-everywhere, and total surveillance.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#86

Post by AndrewStephens »

overkill28 wrote: post #36

I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterpris…

Partly marketing but the integration certainly existed. As I recall, public methods in the main applet class are exposed to JavaScript. It was a little slow and clunky but it worked.

The idea was similar to how web components are used today. Your web page would contain custom applets for a fancy input field, a calendar control date picker, and whatever other controls html didn’t provide, all implemented as Applets.

It could have worked out and the web today would have looked very different except that Java applets always performed terribly on first load. Nobody wanted to have their customers wait 30 seconds for the custom controls to initialize.

I sometimes wonder what might have been if Sun had actually fixed the initialization of Applets. In many ways Applets were nicer to develop than today’s web components.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#87

Post by toyg »

greenkey wrote: post #8
thought_alarm wrote: post #6

8 months later, Microsoft would release VBScript.

Which became dominant for a while, but cgi scripts on the server-side were also hot. Enter Perl and PhP server-side. Then there was JSP, ASP, and ColdFusion, all server-side. Rails! Also server-side. Then back to JS.

Rails is like 10 years later tho... everything else you mentioned was already around by 2000.

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#89

Post by codetrotter »

ChrisRR wrote: post #81
acdha wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Marketing. Java was The Next Big thing and they wanted to jump on board that bandwagon. The direct integration wasn’t very common but a lot of the JavaScript objects had similar names (toString, etc.) and JS was commonly explained as a sort of junior relationship. Edit: expanding my not very common claim — I first started using JavaScript when it was called LiveScript in Netscape betas, the second non-static website…

It's very odd, if someone nowadays called their language CSharpScript, they'd get slapped with a C&D

Sun was literally in on it though?

So it'd be like if whoever was announcing this hypothetical C#Script was doing so together with Microsoft..

Re: Netscape and Sun Announce JavaScript (1995)

#90

Post by blakesterz »

astura wrote: post #71
overkill28 wrote: post #36

I still don't know why they stuck the "Java" name on JavaScript. Very confusing when the two languages are completely unrelated. > Java programs and JavaScript scripts are designed to run on both clients and servers, with JavaScript scripts used to modify the properties and behavior of Java objects, so the range of live online applications that dynamically present information to and interact with users over enterpris…

Brendan Eich addresses that topic in this interview. The whole interview is (very much!) worth a read but here's some key parts about the name https://www.infoworld.com/article/2653798/javascript-creator... >It was all within six months from May till December (1995) that it was Mocha and then LiveScript. And then in early December, Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and it became JavaScript. And the idea was to…

Interesting!

"JavaScript would have been the ideal name because that’s what everyone called it and that’s what the books call it. Microsoft couldn’t get a license from Sun so they called their implementation JScript. So ECMA wanted to call it something and they couldn’t get anybody to donate or they couldn’t get everybody to agree to a donation of the trademark, so they ended up inventing ECMAScript, which sounds a little like a skin disease. Nobody really wants it. "

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