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JS was indeed developed in just 10 days[1]. It was a way for netscape to differentiate itself. It is also why it has so many... quirks.

1. https://www.w3.org/community/webed/wiki/A_Short_History_of_J...

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For me that is the believable part; it's easy to hack together something JavaScript-like using lex and yacc and also probably not too hard to bolt it onto your own browser. It would be reasonably bug-free, too, as there was no standard to test it against.

I do find it hard to believe that Netscape managed to decide this was a (minimal) viable product, produce a press release, and present it to the world in the remaining (at most 21, including Memorial Day, but according to Wikipedia at most 13) days in May.

On the other hand, Netscape may have heard rumors about Sun announcing Java (quite possible if Sun wanted to have a Netscape plugin to demo at launch) and decided they had to have something on the same day. I can't find that on the web, though.

EDIT: http://www2.ldc.lu.se/temadag95/javascript.txt and http://www.phase3.net/sun-announces-java-at-sunworld/ seem to show that the May 23 date in Wikipedia is correct for Java, but incorrect for JavaScript. That date should be December 4, 1995.

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