---
title: "Which came first, Java or JavaScript?"
description: "Java and JavaScript both date from 1995. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-javascript/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, Java or JavaScript?

**Which came first, Java or JavaScript?: Both the same year**

Both 1995

Both arrived in 1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator.

## Side by side

|  | Java | JavaScript |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1995 | 1995 |
| Date | 1995-05-23 | — |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. | Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator. |

## Java

Java was announced in May 1995, having started in 1991 as a project called Oak aimed at interactive television — a market that did not exist yet. Its promise was "write once, run anywhere", achieved by compiling to bytecode for a virtual machine rather than to a specific processor. JavaScript arrived seven months later and was named after it purely as a marketing decision; the two languages are unrelated.

## JavaScript

JavaScript was written in about ten days in May 1995, shipped in Netscape Navigator 2.0 later that year, and was called LiveScript until December, when Netscape renamed it as part of a marketing deal with Sun. It has nothing to do with Java beyond some borrowed syntax. Standardisation as ECMAScript followed in 1997, and the language spent a decade being treated as a toy before it became the most widely deployed programming language in the world.

## Common questions

### Which came first, Java or JavaScript?

Both date from 1995.

### When did Java start?

1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly.

### When did JavaScript start?

1995. Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator.

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## Sources

- Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]