In this day and age, how is Java still confused with JavaScript?

Back in 1998, when I was only 15, I called into a Q&A style tech show on ZDTV to ask one question that was bothering me: What was the difference between Java and JavaScript. My call was never taken, and my question didn’t come up on the show, but I eventually figured it out on my own.

Many web developers over the years has bemoaned Netscape’s decision to name their new programming language JavaScript, which was apparently an attempt to bank off of the recent success of the Java programming language. It has since led to much confusion, but I had thought that anybody who was even remotely technically savvy would know the difference by now. Apparently I was wrong.

Imagine my surprise this morning when I was browsing Google News, and I saw an article titled More holes in Javascript with a by-line that read, “Polish researchers have released technical details and attack code for 30 security issues affecting Oracle’s Java Cloud Service.” Being a JavaScript developer myself, I certainly clicked on the link just to make sure that there wasn’t a javascript vulnerability related to Oracle’s Java Cloud Service. There wasn’t.

Bear in mind that the news site hosting the article, fudzilla.com, appears to be tech news site, and touts itself as, “Your daily stop for breaking news in hardware IT word.” Despite that claim, one of their writers (apparently along with their editing staff) doesn’t understand the difference between JavaScript and Java. An attempt to contact the author to inform him of this mistake led to a bounced email, as apparently his personal server is no longer functioning.

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