History of Java

The history of Java is very interesting. Java has been actually designed for electornic devices, those days it was a booming and very advanced technology in the market, mainly it was using for television, and it was more advance technology for digital cable television industry. However, it was best suited for internet programming.

Java was developed by James Gosling, who is known as the father of Java, in 1990 James Gosling and his team members started the project to implement a platform independent programming language. In 1995 JDK alpha and Beta version has been released.

James Gosling - founder of java
Currently, Java is used in internet programming, mobile devices, games, e-business solutions etc.

Below some of the significant points to be noted:
  1. 1. James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton they created a small team in June 1991 to initiate a java project with the team name called Green Team.
  2. 2. Their initial target is to design the java project for small, embedded systems in electronic devices such as telivisions and set-top boxes.
  3. 3. Initially the file extension was .gt because the very first name of java was "Greentalk". Later they changes that to Oak and it was developed as part of Green project.
  4. 4. The name Oak has given because Oak is the symbol of strength and also it has been chosen as a national tree for many countries like USA, France, Germany etc.
  5. 5. In 1995, the name has been changed from Oak to "Java" because it was already a trademark by Oak Technologies.
  6. 6. Java is an island in Indonesia where the first coffee was produced (called Java coffee). It is a kind of espresso bean. James Gosling while having a cup of coffee nearby his office the Java name was chosen.
  7. 7. The very first version of java (JDK 1.0) was released on January 23, 1996. post that many additional features are added to new java versions.
  8. 8. Java has been enhanced for the use of Windows, Web, enterprise and mobile applications.
Java Version History

Many java versions have been released till now. The current stable release of Java is Java SE 18.

  1. JDK Alpha and Beta (1995)
  2. JDK 1.0 (23rd Jan 1996)
  3. JDK 1.1 (19th Feb 1997)
  4. J2SE 1.2 (8th Dec 1998)
  5. J2SE 1.3 (8th May 2000)
  6. J2SE 1.4 (6th Feb 2002)
  7. J2SE 5.0 (30th Sep 2004)
  8. Java SE 6 (11th Dec 2006)
  9. Java SE 7 (28th July 2011)
  10. Java SE 8 (18th Mar 2014)
  11. Java SE 9 (21st Sep 2017)
  12. Java SE 10 (20th Mar 2018)
  13. Java SE 11 (September 2018)
  14. Java SE 12 (March 2019)
  15. Java SE 13 (September 2019)
  16. Java SE 14 (Mar 2020)
  17. Java SE 15 (September 2020)
  18. Java SE 16 (Mar 2021)
  19. Java SE 17 (September 2021)
  20. Java SE 18 (March 2022)
  21. Java SE 19 (September 2022)
  22. Java SE 20 (March 2023)
  23. Java SE 21 (September 2023)
  24. Java SE 22 (March 2024)