Before you jump out of your chair screaming "Blaspheme", let me preface this title with the following:

JavaScript isn't Java. Developers often complain about recruiters contacting them for Java jobs when they are JavaScript developers. I was one of these developers that got dozen of such requests.

A little history of JavaScript for tech recruiters

JavaScript, often called JS, was created in 10 days back in 1995. Yes, It took Brendan Eich 10 days to create a programming language. It was a matter of life or death for Netscape, the software company that brought us the first commercial browser: Mosaïc.

Here was the small issue. Back in the early nineties, there was no Internet Explorer. Therefore, to surf the web, people mostly used Mosaïc on Windows. Mosaïc was a paid product by Netscape and available for users on Windows.

That means that Microsoft, the owner of Windows, was in charge of distributing a product by another company.

At some point, according to the story of JavaScript as told by Ben Horowitz, an ex-employee of Netscape, in his book "The Hard Thing About Hard Things", Microsoft bought a browser from a university and started distributing that for free for Windows users. If you follow until now, you understand right away that Mosaïc, a pretty big revenue for Netscape, was in danger.

2 products with the same features, one paid, the other free. Which one will you choose?

From Mocha to LiveScript to JavaScript

In order to keep their users on Mosaïc, one engineer at Netscape decided to create a programming language called "Mocha" in 10 days. If you're wondering why creating a language in such situations helps? You should read my essay about the power of programming languages.

In short, the reasoning is by having a programming language that works on Mosaïc, they could allow developers to write apps available only on Mosaïc. Therefore, users will keep using Mosaïc even when Internet Explorer will be available for free.

Think of it this way: It is difficult to switch from the iOS world to Android.

However, developers didn't rush on writing apps for with "Mocha". Netscape renamed the language to LiveScript. As a way to emphasise that the language helps create Live (dynamic) pages. That didn't work either.

Java is for serious developers

Back in the early nineties, Java was the most popular language and It was considered A Real Programming Language. If you were serious about programming then you were using Java.

As a marketing move, Netscape agreed with Sun Systems, the creator of Java, to renamed LiveScript to JavaScript. It worked. JavaScript started taking root.

Microsoft understood their strategy and created Its own language called JScript, a copy of JavaScript.

Microsoft was evil and relentless

Microsoft fought back by creating their own version of JavaScript called JScript. It was a copy of JavaScript with the same bugs. Microsoft was relentless and unapologetic.

Mosaïc ended up dying and Netscape was sold to AOL in 1999.

Internet Explorer became the default browser for everyone.

JScript died and JavaScript became the default language of the web.

Takeaways

JavaScript and Java are only linked from a marketing point of view. They are not the same. You'll make a lot of enemies if this concept isn't clear.

This was To survive, JavaScript "copied" Java. I hope you've learned something by reading this essay. Please share your feedback in the comments.