History

• Java was invented by team of developers which was headed by James Gosling and other team members are Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, Ed Frank, and Mike Sheridan at Sun Microsystems, Inc. In 1991.

• It took 18 months to develop the first working version.

• This language was initially called “Oak,” but was renamed “Java” in 1995.

• Initially java was invented for a platform-independent (that is, architecture-neutral) language that could be used to create software to be embedded in various consumer electronic devices, such as microwave ovens and remote controls.

• The trouble with C and C++ is that they are designed to be compiled for a specific target platforms/operating systems.

• Java is a high-level programming language originally developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1995. Java runs on a variety of platforms, such as Windows, Mac OS, and the various versions of UNIX.

• James Gosling initiated the Java language project in June 1991 for use in one of his many set-top box projects. The language, initially called Oak after an oak tree that stood outside Gosling's office, also went by the name Green and ended up later being renamed as Java, from a list of random words.

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

• On 13 November 2006, Sun released much of Java as free and open source software under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL).

• On 8 May 2007, Sun finished the process, making all of Java's core code free and open-source, aside from a small portion of code to which Sun did not hold the copyright.