History of Javascript

Javascript created in just 10 days in May 1995 by Brendan Eich for Netscape Navigator and named it "LiveScript". The purpose was to bring out a programming language that would allow web pages to become interactive. Before Brendan Eiche could get started, Netscape collaborated with hardware and software company Sun Microsystems, to include its more static programming language, Java, in Netscape Navigator with an added support for Sun’s Java applets. In 1995, Netscape announced its client side scripting language would be named "JavaScript" (renamed "LiveScript" to "JavaScript") in a joint announcement with Sun. By then, Netscape management had decided that a scripting language had to have a syntax similar to Java's.

Java & JavaScript are in fact two entirely different languages that serve completely different purposes.

JavaScript’s nature:

NO Alternative: There are many things that a programmer must consider when selecting a program language unless that programmer is writing for web browsers, and where the only choice currently is JavaScript.

Dynamic: JavaScript is a dynamic language. It has a flexible datatype (arrays) that can easily simulate s-expressions. can directly create objects, without creating an object factory. Variables and object properties can always hold values of any type. 

Javascript is functional and object-oriented: JavaScript supports two programming language paradigms: functional programming (first-class functions, closures, partial application via bind(), built-in map() and reduce() for arrays, etc.) and object-oriented programming (mutable state, objects, inheritance, etc.).

For late readers: Netscape is an American computer services company best known for Netscape Navigator, its web browser. Netscape Navigator was later acquired by Microsoft. And Netscape was acquired by AOL.