History of Java Programming Language

Java is an object oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems in early 1990 by developers James Gosling, Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton. In 1991 James Gosling and his friends formed a team called Green Team to further work on this project. The original idea was to develop this programming language for digital devices such as television, set-top box, remote etc. Later this idea was dropped and Java is developed for internet programming.

History of Java

Original developer and programming name:

James Gosling is considered the original developer of Java language. He is also known as father of Java. He started on this in early 1990s. He originally named it Greentalk and the extension was .gt.

Programming language renamed from Greentalk to Oak:

When Green team (James Gosling, Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton) started working on it, it was renamed to Oak. Oak is a tree name, which is considered a symbol of strength and is a national tree in many countries such as U.S.A., France, Germany, Romania, etc.

Again renamed from Oak to Java in 1995:

The project is again renamed from Oak to Java in 1995 as Oak was a trademark for other organization.

Original and first version of Java:

JDK first version alpha & beta was released in 1995 by Sun Microsystems.

Java Version History

Version	Release date
JDK Alpha & Beta	1995
JDK 1.0	January 1996
JDK 1.1	February 1997
J2SE 1.2	December 1998
J2SE 1.3	May 2000
J2SE 1.4	February 2002
Java SE 5	September 2004
Java SE 6	December 2006
Java SE 7	July 2011
Java SE 8	March 2014
Java SE 9	September 2017
	March 2018
Java SE 11	September 2018
Java SE 12	March 2019
Java SE 13	September 2019
Java SE 14	March 2020
Java SE 15	September 2020
Java SE 16	March 2021
Java SE 17	September 2021
Java SE 18	March 2022
Java SE 19	to be released by September 2022
Java SE 20	to be released by March 2023
Java SE 21	to be released by September 2023