The Java Programing Language

The Java programming language is an Object Oriented Programming Language, developed by Sun Micro Systems Inc. in the early 1990s. The development of Java started with a closed door project named "The Green Project" initiated by Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan, and James Gosling of Sun Micro Systems in February 1, 1991. The Green Project was a secret project, with 13 staffs in strength called "The Green Team". The objective of the project was to invent a new technology that could lead to the convergence of digitally controlled consumer devices and computers. To achieve this goal The Green Team isolated themselves in an anonymous office (On Sand Hill Rd in Melano Park), disconnected all regular communication with Sun and worked round the clock for 18 months. Naughton focused on the development of graphics system of the controller, Gosling on the programming language ideas and Sheridan on business development. Finally in the Summer of 1992 they emerged with a working demo, an interactive, handheld device controller with an animated touch screen user interface.The equipment was called "The Star Seven". To program this equipment Gosling created a new language and he named it as Oak. He named it Oak because there was a big, lovely Oak Tree just outside his window.(Later they ran into legal problems with trademark and they changed the name from Oak to Java)

The Green Team came out from the hiding. They tried to find out market for this new technology in the cable television, set-top boxes and other entertainment equipment industries. But the industry was too infant at that time and they could not make a move. They had again lot of discussions about the future of this and finally they realized that the Internet, which was gaining popularity at lightning speed, is beckoning them. Because The Internet was exactly the type of network configuration that The Green team had envisioned for the cable TV industry. After this they started another project named "The LiveOak" whose objective was retargeting the Oak at The Internet. They also started the development of a graphical browser that is able to handle the so called "Java Applets". In May 23, 1995, Sun formally announced the browser named as "Hot Java". Since then the Java platform has been adopted more quickly across the industry than any other new technology in computing history. All major computing platform vendors have signed up to integrate Java technology as a core component of their products.

The first version of Java Development Kit, The JDK 1.0 was released on January 23, 1996. From the few hundred class files the JDK 1.0 had, it has now grown dramatically into more than 3000 classes in J2SE 5.0. This is brief history of Java. Now Java is extensively used to program stand alone applications to Multi tier web applications.