It was partly marketing, part to appease Sun Microsystems at the time, whose Java Applet product were supposed to be the true unifying web platform. Having a built-in scripting language in the browser annoyed a great many important people, who felt it undercut the importance of Java. Calling it Javascript gave the illusion that it was a smaller subset of Java, (even though it clearly isn't), while also benefiting from the more recognizable/marketable name 'Java', which was the new hottness.

[–] drcobaltjedi@programming.dev 6 points 1 year ago

I actually had a boss who thought they could let me do java at work (can't in house executables were a "security risk" according to corprate) but he ended up making me do javascript, which I don't know. I got very frustrated trying to get him to understand JS isn't java and now because of JS's weird behaviors I can't actually do the thing he wants so easily.

[–] unwieldycat@kbin.social 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was initially called "LiveScript", but since Java applets were really popular at the time of its creation, they went with "JavaScript" instead to get attention.

[–] AtomicPurple@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I didn't know this, Livescript is a waaaayyyyy better name for it. One more reason to hate Java applets I guess

[–] mycus@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

I think it's because of the coffee beans from Java island, looks like they are popular around those dev cycles

[–] gnuswann@programming.dev 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

As far as I know, that's because Java was the world's first programming language at the time when Netscape and Brendan Eich developed JavaScript. The story of JavaScript is certainly one of the most chaotic. Very interesting story tho

[–] fabian@programming.dev 3 points 1 year ago

Java is not very much older than Javascript and at the time it was far from the world's first programming language. It probably was measured by hype in developer circles the Rust of the mid-nineties.

[–] Khalic@kbin.social 2 points 1 year ago

I did javascript back in 2008 already. It was WILD

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 2 points 1 year ago

A detail a lot of people are missing is the absolutely massive marketing campaign Sun did for Java in the 1990s.