Free java Tutorials for Beginners

The Java programming language has a long history. It started in 1991 when Sun Microsystem began something called “The Green Project”. The goal of the Green project was to create a new portable programming language. One that could be used to create applications that could run on multiple operating system. The original name of the language was “Oak” for a large Oak tree that stood outside the windows of the developers offices. But between the time the project began and the time the language was released it was renamed as java supposedly because the amount of the coffee the developers were drinking.

 

Java was first released to the public in 1995 and thereafter saw rapid evolution in change . Starting in 1995 the phrase “Write Once, Run Anywhere” was popularized. Again the code of Java was that you will be able to write a program, you will be able to compile once and be able to run on Unix, on Windows, on Mac, and other operating systems for which there was a java Virtual machine.

Java evolved swiftly . In the early years there was a new release about once a year. In 1996 sun released the first complete Java developers kit or JDK supporting a broad range of application development task. Version 1.1 the following year saw improvements to the object oriented nature of the java with inter-classes and java beans. The JDBC API for talking to databases, RMI or remote method invocation for distributed systems and reflection for improving the dynamic capabilities of the language.

In 1998 Java was rebranded as J2SE or java two standard edition. The standard edition distinguished from the enterprise edition which was the frame work for building large scale web applications. the version number was Java2 version 1.2, a little confusing and the two after the day stuck around for many many years but the versions were incremented using point numbers.

J2SE 1.2 included the Swing graphical API for building desktop applications, the collections framework for managing multiple data elements and new tools including the Just in Time compiler and the Java plugin which standardized the version of java across web-browsers.

A couple of years later J2SE 1.3 added new tools including the hotspot JVM, a new version of the java virtual machine. The Java Sound API improved and debugging capabilities.

In 2002 version 1.4 added new tools in the language and then in 2004 a major new release came around. That was J2SE 5.0. This version was known both as 1.5 and 5.0 but subsequent new releases would jus used the major numbers so it would become 5, 6, 7 and so on. J2SE 5 was a major new change for the language. A new feature called generics was implemented  that let you strongly datatype  collection elements, enumerations, variable arguments and looping with for-each was all improved. And in term of language syntax this was really the last major change to the language. Every thing since then has been nibbling around the edges.

In 2006 java6 came out . It improved performance for database connectivity, improved graphical programming and they added other smaller features in the language and then the pace of change slowed. From 2006 to 2010 Sun Microsystem released occasional maintenances releases to the language so you would have Java6 maintenance release 10 , 12 and so on and now the maintenance version have moved to version 29 with the main Java version java6.

 

Then in 2010 a major event occurred . Oracle bought Sun . Sun Microsystems and all of its assets including the java programming language became the part of the Oracle. Oracle company started managing Java along with JCP the Java community process that sun began . In 2011 J2SE 7 was released. It included minor changes to the language such as strings in switch, try-catch improvements, Simplified variable arguments and underscores in numeric literals and some other small scale tools and were expecting another version of java down the road possibly known as J2SE8 and it would include many things that would differ from J2SE7 including something called lambda expressions or closures. If you don’t know what those are, You needn't be worry about that since they are not part of Java Language now.

Java has been around since 1995 and has been used in lot of programming environment.

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The history of Java programming language can be summarized in the given timeline above.