History of Java

Java History

In the early 90s, extending the power of network computing to the activities of everyday life was a radical vision. In 1991, a small group of Sun engineers called the "Green Team" believed that the next wave in computing was the union of digital consumer devices and computers.

James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton initiated the Java language project in June 1991.

The language was initially called Oak after an oak tree that stood outside Gosling’s office; it went by the name Green later, and was later renamed Java.

Sun Microsystems released the first public implementation as Java 1.0 in 1995. It promised " Once, Run Anywhere" (WORA), providing no-cost run-times on popular platforms.

With the advent of Java 2 (released initially as J2SE 1.2 in December 1998), new versions had multiple configurations built for different types of platforms. For example, J2EE targeted enterprise applications and the greatly stripped-down version J2ME for mobile applications (Mobile Java). J2SE designated the Standard Edition. In 2006, for marketing purposes, Sun renamed new J2 versions as Java EE, Java ME, and Java SE, respectively.

Java Versions

Major release versions of Java, along with their release dates and Code Names: