Blog

History of Java

Java is a high-level, language-specific programming language developed by James Gosling in the early 1990s. Originally designed for technical equipment such as television communications and set-top boxes, Java was the most sophisticated technology in the number of television business phones at the time. The history of Java begins with the Green Team. Members of the Java team (also known as the Green Team) have begun this work to develop a language for digital devices. However, it is suitable for internet programs. Also, Java technology was introduced by Netscape.

The principle for writing Java programming was “simple, robust, multi-threaded, portable, platform independent, secure, high performance, object oriented, distributed and dynamic”. Java was good for programming on the internet.

Today Java is used in internet programming, mobile devices, games, e-business solutions and many other areas. It provides important points that explain the history of Java.

• James Gosling, Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton started the Java Language Project in June 1991. Sun’s small engineering team was named Green Team.
  Originally designed for small embedded systems in electronic devices such as set-top boxes.
• It was originally named “Greentalk” by James Gosling and the file extension was .gt.
• It was later called Oak and was developed as part of the Green Project.

Why was Java named Oak ?

The name Oak was used by Gosling to honor the oak tree left outside his office. In addition, the Oak is a symbol of solidarity and has been chosen as the national tree for many countries such as the USA, France, Germany, Romania, etc. But later they had to rename it to “JAVA” in 1995 as because Oak was already a trademark by Oak Technologies.

Why Java ?

Gosling and his team came together to choose a new name. Suggested words are “dynamic”, “revolutionary”, “silk”, “shock”, “DNA”, “Java”, etc. They wanted something that reflected the essence of technology. Easy to pronounce and fun to say.

“Java was one of the best choices with Silk,” according to James Gosling. Java was so unique that most team members preferred it to other names.
Java is a type of espresso coffee bean on the Indonesian island where the first coffee (called Java Coffee) was produced.

It was developed by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems (now an Oracle Corporation subsidiary) and was released in 1995. In 1995, Time magazine called Java in one of the top 10 products of 1995.

The first version is JDK 1.0 which is released on January 23, 1996. Many other features have been added to the language since the first version of Java. Today Java is used in Windows applications, Android applications , Business applications, Mobile applications like tabs and more. New Java features are added with each new version.

History Of Java Versions

There are many Java versions released so far. At the time of writing this post, the latest release of Java is Java SE 14.

Happy Learning 🙂