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History of JAVA



James Arthur Gosling started the Java language project in June 1991 at Sun Microsystems. Nearly it took more than 15 months to make first working version.  In starting, he named the language Oak while staring at an oak tree outside his office window! The name Oak was later replaced due to a patent search which determined that the name was copyrighted and used for another programming language. According to Gosling, "the Java development team discovered that Oak was the name of a programming language that preexisted Sun's language, so another name had to be chosen."




FIGURE 2.1Team members of Java


FIGURE 2.2 (a) Logo of Sun Microsystem
It was difficult to find a good name for a programming language, finally, one day all members of the project were sitting at the local coffee shop and they got idea to keep name JAVA because the reason to keep this name was that all characters of JAVA are beginning letters of inventors of that language. Inventors were James Gosling, Arthur Van Hoff, AndyBechtolsheim. There were other inventors also who contributed lot more to make this language and they are: Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, Ed Frank, and Mike Sherdian. The coffee cup symbol of Java is also kept because the idea to keep the name of Java came at coffee place.


WHAT IS JAVA?

Java is high-level object oriented programming language expressly designed for use in the distributed environment of the internet. Its main purpose is to let application developers write once, run anywhere(WORA). Java is considered by many as one of the most powerful programming
languages of the 20th century, and is widely used from application software to web applications.

The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ and also added a few new features to make language simple, easy to learn and object-oriented language. It was designed to have the look and feel of the C++ language, but it is simpler to use than C++ and enforces an object-oriented model. It is fairly secure and its security is configurable, allowing network and file access to be restricted. Over the years it has evolved as a successful language for use both on and off the internet. 10 years later, it’s still an extremely popular language with over 6.5 million developers worldwide.


WHY JAVA?

You might ask, Why Java? That’s a good question, especially if you are new to the language. How does a programming language that has come just in 1995 and is quite similar in syntax and design to C++ become so widely accepted? Why not just stick to languages that have been used for so many years: C, C++, COBOL, FORTRAN, and so on?

As per expert view, there were many problems in existing languages like C and C++ that they were designed for specific target. However, it is also possible to execute a C or C++ program in any CPU but to do so; it requires full C or C++ compiler targeted for that CPU. The problem was that compilers were costly and was taking more time to develop. So to remove this problem, cost-efficient solution was required. To find the solution for the problem James Gosling and his team members started to work on a portable, platform-independent language that could be used to produce code that would run on any type of CPU. This effort finally led to the developing a language named Java.

Somewhat surprisingly, the original motivation for Java was not the Internet! Instead, Java was initially developed as a language that will let you create applications that can run on any machines. The another main purpose of developing java was for consumer electronics devices like TVs, VCRs, toasters, microwaves and such other electronic machines.

Java allows you to create small programs namedapplets. These are the programs that you can embed in internet webpages to provide some intelligence. They might simply display an animated image, or support data entry of some kind. Java also helps you to develop large-scale application programs that you can run on any computer that supports the language. You can even write programs that can run an applets as well as applications.



Images taken from: Google

Compiled By: Chaudhary Amit V.
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