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JavaScript (originally called LiveScript) is a web scripting language for clients and servers
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Originally JavaScript was designed to do what you think Java should do -- elegant dynamic animation on the client side
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Then along came Java and JavaScript was eclipsed as it was just Netscape and not so well designed
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Netscape tried to make it a server side language (LiveWire) instead of Perl but Java was much better here as well
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JavaScript lived on for simple arithmetic on client side to produce somewhat better frames (as clicking on a link can call a JavaScript function instead of just loading a URL) and to quickly check forms client side without going back to server which is slow
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A serious weakness was that dynamic aspects of JavaScript could only be used at "load" time and other changes of JavaScript required a "reload" which is real ugly and slow
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