History of Java

Java today might be one of those programming languages that most developers or aspiring developers have a love-hate relationship with. But did you know that back in 1995, Java was named one of the best products of the year by Time magazine?

Let’s look at the journey that this popular programming language has witnessed ever since its inception.

The name ‘Java’ was inspired by a type of coffee grown on the Indonesian island of Java. However, the original name of Java was Oak, but this name could not be used due to a pre-existing trademark.

The Java project was started in 1991 at Sun Microsystems by a team called ‘The Green Team’ led by James Gosling and having Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton as members. James has a bachelor of science in computer science from the University of Calgary and a PhD in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University.

The goal of the green project was to examine the up-and-coming consumer electronics market. They decided that development needed to be a more platform-neutral process and started by extending the C++ compiler. Java development began once it was concluded that C++ wasn’t a fit.

By 1992, the team had created its first device running on Java technology, which was a PDA device named ‘Star Seven’ with an animated touchscreen interface featuring Java’s mascot, 'Duke', a small, friendly, and anthropomorphic penguin that quickly became an iconic symbol for Java and was available to assist the user. Duke was named after Duke Ellington, the jazz musician.

By 1993, the Green Team had become a wholly owned subsidiary of Sun Microsystems named First Person, which pursued a time-warner request for a proposal for an interactive cable TV system. Unfortunately, Sun didn’t win the contract, First Person was rolled back into Sun, and the team changed focus to online services, city rooms, and desktops.

By 1994, Sun had found a real use for its new platform-agnostic programming language, the World Wide Web. A browser named WebRunner, and later Hot Java, was built and demonstrated to some executives. With JavaScript not yet released, hot Java support for moving objects and denying dynamic executable content represented exciting new features for the web. This was also the year when the Java compiler was first implemented in Java itself.

The Java compiler, which is a fundamental tool for translating human-readable Java code into machine-executable bytecode, was implemented using Java programming language. This was a noteworthy advancement in the evolution of Java, showcasing its flexibility and reinforcing the concept of "Write Once, Run Anywhere.

1995 was the release year for Java and its web browser. After years of development, Sun had finally found a spot in the market for its new platform-neutral language, and it was time to release it to the world. It didn’t take long for Java to reach tens of thousands of downloads. Given the smaller number of people on the internet at this time, the release was a huge success. Part of this success was, of course, the support for Java in Netscape Navigator, which came on September 18th, 1995.

After its release in 1996, a host of new APIs were added to the language, including the Java Media API, the Telephony API, and the Card API, which would allow Java to be run on SIM cards and other smart cards. The first Java conference also drew six thousand attendees this year.

By 2006, after a decade of new and approved APIs and putting Java nearly everywhere, it was finally open source. Java SE 6 was released in the same year.

In 2007, Java FX was released, and an improved Java GUI library using XML was intended to replace the earlier Swing library.

In 2008, Android was released. Android uses Java for its UI code and application development, which generates huge interest in the language to this day.

In 2009, Sun was acquired by Oracle, and thus, Java became an Oracle product. Also this year, the first version of Minecraft was released, which made a big splash for Java in the gaming industry and inspired many young developers to learn the language to expand on the game with their own mods and plugins. Since then, Java has long lost its place as the web’s programming language to Javascript.

In 2014, Java 8 introduced lambda expressions, bringing a functional programming paradigm to the language. The Streams API and the Java.time package were also introduced in this version.

In 2017, Project Jigsaw introduced the module system for modular programming. JShell, a Read-Eval-Print Loop (REPL) tool, was also added. Subsequent versions introduced features like local-variable type inference (var keyword), pattern matching, sealed classes, and records, enhancing developer productivity and code readability.

Java has been used in space exploration. NASA's Mars Rover used Java for programming and control.

Java has continued to grow and improve, currently sitting at the top of the TIOBE programming community index, and has well maintained its position as one of the world’s top programming languages. With a number of JVM-based languages coming along to work in place of Java, such as Kotlin and Scala, it’s unclear whether or not the Java language will lose ground to these in the future. However, as a platform, Java appears to be here to stay.

Java is one of the most widely used programming languages globally, powering applications from mobile devices to large-scale enterprise systems.

The history of Java is a testament to its adaptability, community involvement, and continuous innovation, making it a cornerstone in the world of software development. From its humble beginnings to becoming a versatile and robust language, Java's journey is both inspiring and impactful.