Which came first, Java or Star Wars?

Star Wars came first, by 18 years. The first film opened in 32 American cinemas.

Side by side

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.

Star Wars

Star Wars opened in May 1977 on fewer than forty screens because the distributor had little faith in it, and it went on to be the highest-grossing film made to that point. Fox let Lucas keep the merchandising and sequel rights in exchange for a lower directing fee, a decision that transferred an extraordinary amount of money. It is eleven years younger than Star Trek.