--- title: "Which came first, Java or the World Wide Web?" description: "Java vs the World Wide Web: the World Wide Web came first, by 6 years — 1989 against 1995. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently." url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-world-wide-web/ site: "At One Place" --- # Which came first, Java or the World Wide Web? **Which came first, Java or the World Wide Web?: the World Wide Web** 1989 — 6 years before Java the World Wide Web came first, by 6 years. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN. ## Side by side | | Java | the World Wide Web | | --- | --- | --- | | Year | 1995 | 1989 | | Date | 1995-05-23 | — | | Category | technology | technology | | What happened | Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. | Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN. | ## 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. ## the World Wide Web Berners-Lee circulated his proposal in March 1989, built the first browser and server by the end of 1990, and CERN put the software into the public domain in 1993. The Web is twenty years younger than the internet: the internet is the network, the Web is one service running on it, and email and file transfer both predate the Web by decades. The first website went live in December 1990 and is still online. ## Common questions ### Which came first, Java or the World Wide Web? the World Wide Web, by 6 years — 1989 against 1995. ### When did Java start? 1995. Sun Microsystems announced Java publicly. ### When did the World Wide Web start? 1989. Tim Berners-Lee wrote the proposal at CERN. ## Related pages - [Microsoft or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/microsoft-vs-world-wide-web/) - [Apple or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-world-wide-web/) - [Apple or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/apple-vs-java/) - [the internet (ARPANET) or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-world-wide-web/) - [the internet (ARPANET) or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/arpanet-vs-java/) - [email or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-world-wide-web/) - [email or Java?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/email-vs-java/) - [the Macintosh or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/macintosh-vs-world-wide-web/) - [Windows or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/windows-vs-world-wide-web/) - [the World Wide Web or YouTube?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/world-wide-web-vs-youtube/) - [Python or the World Wide Web?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/python-vs-world-wide-web/) - [Java or Microsoft?](https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/java-vs-microsoft/) ## Sources - Wikidata — Wikimedia Foundation (https://www.wikidata.org/) [CC0 1.0]