In what year was JavaScript invented?

JavaScript was invented in 1995. Brendan Eich created its first version at Netscape for the company’s Netscape Navigator browser, completing an early implementation in roughly ten days to meet a demanding browser-release schedule.

The project began during the rapid growth of the Web, when developers wanted pages to respond to user actions instead of remaining static documents. Netscape considered several approaches, including bringing Java into the browser, but ultimately asked Eich to design a compact scripting language for ordinary web authors.

The language went through several names in that same year. It was initially known as Mocha, then LiveScript, and finally JavaScript. The official JavaScript announcement came in December 1995. The name reflected Java’s popularity at the time, but JavaScript was not derived from Java in the way many newcomers assume.

JavaScript later became standardized under the name ECMAScript. Netscape submitted the language to Ecma International in 1996, and the first ECMAScript specification was published in 1997. Thus 1995 identifies the invention and first deployment period, while 1997 marks the first formal standard.