History Of Java

Hi, I am Rutik, Today I am Give you information about the History Of Java. If you Like/love this information share it with your friends. And place a comment for me to improve my writing skills, and for future updates subscribe by Email.

Java is an object-oriented programming language. Java was developed by James Gosling and colleagues at Sun Microsystems in the 1990s.

History of Java

Java was started as a project called “Oak” by James Gosling in June 1991. The goal was to implement a virtual machine that is much simpler than C/C++.

Java was developed with the goal to implement the “Write Once, Run Anywhere” programming model.

Philosophy of Java

The Java programming language was built on the following five philosophies.

1. It will use the Object-oriented programming methodology
2. The same program should be executable on multiple operating systems.
3. Built-in support for using computer networks.
4. Designed to execute code from the remote sources securely.
5. It should be easy to use, take the good features of Object-oriented programming.

How Java got its name?

The original name of the programming language was Oak. Later on, it was discovered that there is already a programming language named Oak.

As the story goes, after a lot of discussions, the development team took a break and went out for Coffee. That’s where the name “Java” was proposed and finalized by the team. 

Version History of Java

Java is a general-purpose programming language. It was first made available for public use in 1996. It has evolved a lot during this long period of 20+ years of use. The latest version of Java is Java 15 or JDK 15 released on September, 15th 2020.

From the first version released in 1996 to the latest version 15 released in 2020, the Java platform has been actively being developed for about nearly 26 years. Many changes and improvements have been made to the technology over the years. The following table summarizes all versions of Java SE from its early days to the latest. 

Java SE Version	Version Number	Release Date
JDK 1.0 (Oak)	1.0	January 1996
JDK 1.1	1.1	February 1997
J2SE 1.2 (Playground)	1.2	December 1998
J2SE 1.3 (Kestrel)	1.3	May 2000
J2SE 1.4 (Merlin)	1.4	February 2002
J2SE 5.0 (Tiger)	1.5	September 2004
Java SE 6 (Mustang)	1.6	December 2006
Java SE 7 (Dolphin)	1.7	July 2011
Java SE 8	1.8	March 2014
Java SE 9	9	September, 21st 2017
Java SE 10	10	March, 20th 2018
Java SE 11	11	September, 25th 2018
Java SE 12	12	March, 19th 2019
Java SE 13	13	September, 17th 2019
Java SE 14	14	March, 17th 2020
Java SE 15	15	September, 15th 2020
Java SE 16	16	Expected on March 2021

From the table above we can see that the naming and the version number have been changing overtimes:

• Versions 1.0 and 1.1 are named JDK (Java Development Kit).
• From versions 1.2 to 1.4, the platform is named J2SE (Java 2 Standard Edition).
• From version 1.5, Sun introduces internal and external versions. The internal version is continuous from previous ones (1.5 after 1.4), but the external version has a big jump (5.0 for 1.5). This could make confusion for someone, so keep in mind that version 1.5 and version 5.0 are just two different version names for only one thing.
• From Java 6, the version name is Java SE X.

Major versions were released after every 2 years, however, the Java SE 7 took 5 years to be available after its predecessor Java SE 6, and 3 years for Java SE 8 to be available to the public afterward.

Since Java SE 10,  new versions will be released every six months.

There is no expert who can remain an expert without sharing their knowledge. So, keep sharing your knowledge with everyone.