---
title: "Which came first, JavaScript or Netflix?"
description: "JavaScript vs Netflix: JavaScript came first, by 2 years — 1995 against 1997. What happened in each case, and why the dates are often given differently."
url: https://atoneplace.net/which-came-first/javascript-vs-netflix/
site: "At One Place"
---

# Which came first, JavaScript or Netflix?

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

1995 — 2 years before Netflix

JavaScript came first, by 2 years. Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator.

## Side by side

|  | JavaScript | Netflix |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Year | 1995 | 1997 |
| Date | — | 1997-08-29 |
| Category | technology | technology |
| What happened | Brendan Eich wrote it in ten days for Netscape Navigator. | Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company. |

## 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.

## Netflix

Netflix was founded in August 1997, a year before Google, and posted DVDs for a decade before streaming launched in January 2007. The famous origin story — Hastings founding it after a $40 late fee on Apollo 13 — has been called a useful myth by co-founder Marc Randolph. Blockbuster declined to buy the company for $50 million in 2000.

## Common questions

### Which came first, JavaScript or Netflix?

JavaScript, by 2 years — 1995 against 1997.

### When did JavaScript start?

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

### When did Netflix start?

1997. Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph founded a DVD rental-by-post company.

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## Sources

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