History:

Java Script has an interesting story behind it one that shows the fluid, breakneck pace at which the web develops. Netscape executives say that in all of the hands-on contact they had with early customers, a common refrain they heard was that the Web needed an easy-to-use scripting language. Java they heard, was great, but it was too difficult for most Webmasters. And customers said they wanted Netscape to create the language. So they did, and the Netscape Scripting language was born.

The language’s first official name, LiveScript, was a reference to Netscape’s LiveWire platform, an integrated server-side environment for managing Web sites, building server applications and interfacing with databases. In the early days, Netscape executives often said LiveScript was Java based, because it drew a lot of its basic syntax from Java. Sun executives always bristled at this comparison, mainly because Sun had no part in the creation of LiveScript and was unsure what effect the simple scripting language would have on its more complex but infinitely more powerful Java programming language.