Javascript: "little brother to Java ... complementary language"

[tami]

hi,

Es wurde also absichtlich umbenannt von LiveScript zu JavaScript, um Java auf eine Art den Rang abzulaufen als die Websprache innerhalb eines Browsers, die Java mit seinen Applets werden wollte.

JavaScript sollte Java-Applets nicht ersetzen (das wäre eine dumme Aktion von Sun gewesen), sondern ergänzen. JavaScript sollte die einfache Scripting-Schnittstelle für Java-Applets werden, und Netscape Navigator bot diese Schnittstelle tatsächlich. Mit JavaScript ließen sich erst nur ein paar Dinge wie Formularlogik umsetzen, der interessante Rest sollte in Applets bzw. auf dem Server passieren. Daraus ist zum Glück nichts geworden, wobei Java-Applets, ActiveX-Controls und NPAPI-Plugins durchaus 10 Jahre geherrscht haben.

Brendan Eich, der Entwickler von LiveScript, über die Geschichte im Interview bei Infoworld 2008:

Mozilla's Brendan Eich describes JavaScript's history, the upcoming upgrade, and disagreements with Microsoft

"
InfoWorld: As I understand it, JavaScript started out as Mocha, then became LiveScript and then became JavaScript when Netscape and Sun got together. But it actually has nothing to do with Java or not much to do with it, correct?

Eich: That’s right. It was all within six months from May till December (1995) that it was Mocha and then LiveScript. And then in early December, Netscape and Sun did a license agreement and it became JavaScript. And the idea was to make it a complementary scripting language to go with Java, with the compiled language.

...

InfoWorld: What was your main goal in developing JavaScript?

Eich: The idea was to make something that Web designers, people who may or may not have much programming training, could use to add a little bit of animation or a little bit of smarts to their Web forms and their Web pages. So it’s 1995, the Web is very early. HTML was 3.2, I think, or something like that. People did not have much programmability. Java was coming along at the same time but it required you to use a high-powered programming language and then run a compiler and put your code into a package that became an applet that was part of the page but it was in a little silo. It was kind of walled off.
And it was hard to do -- it was for professional programmers. It was for the high-powered real estate virtual tour or something like that. Whereas JavaScript was just a little snippet you could write, you could copy somebody else’s, you could learn as you went. You didn’t have to learn the whole language to use it and you could buy it by the yard.

That idea was very strongly held by Marc Andreessen and myself. Bill Joy at Sun was the champion of it, which was very helpful because that’s how we got the name. And we were pushing it as a little brother to Java, as a complementary language like Visual Basic was to C++ in Microsoft’s language families at the time. And it took off. We got it out in time."

mfg

tami