---
title: "Which came first, JavaScript or Microsoft?"
description: "JavaScript vs Microsoft: Microsoft came first, by 20 years — 1975 against 1995. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-microsoft/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, JavaScript or Microsoft?

**Which came first, JavaScript or Microsoft?: Microsoft**

1975 — 20 years before JavaScript

Microsoft came first, by 20 years. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

## Side by side

|  | JavaScript | Microsoft |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1995 | 1975 |
| Date | — | 1975-04-04 |
| Category | technology | company |
| What happened | Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator. | Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque. |

## 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.

## Microsoft

Microsoft was founded in April 1975 to sell a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — a product they had demonstrated before writing all of it. It predates Apple by almost exactly one year. The hyphen was dropped in 1976 and the company moved to Washington state in 1979.

## Common questions

### Which came first, JavaScript or Microsoft?

Microsoft, by 20 years — 1975 against 1995.

### When did JavaScript start?

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

### When did Microsoft start?

1975. Gates and Allen founded Micro-Soft in Albuquerque.

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## Sources

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