A short history of Java
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Where Java came from
- James Gosling and his team at Sun Microsystems built Java in the early 1990s.
- They released it in 1995 with a bold promise: "write once, run anywhere."
- Its first name was Oak, after a tree outside Gosling's window — then it became Java.
Write once, run anywhere
- Java code is turned into bytecode — not one computer's own machine language.
- That bytecode runs on the JVM (Java Virtual Machine), a small engine on each device.
- So the same program runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux with no changes.
Java grows up
- In 2006–2007, Sun made Java free and open-source for anyone to use and improve.
- That open version, OpenJDK, is what most people run today.
- Oracle now guides the language, with a fresh release every six months.
Java today
- The current long-term version is Java 21 (LTS — supported for years).
- Java is still one of the most widely used languages in the world.
- It powers phone apps, banks, huge websites, and games — that's the next lesson.
