A software platform developed by Sun Microsystems. The Java platform has been specifically developed so that programs written for it will look and function approximately the same regardless of the device it is running on.
The Java platform is usually split into three parts:
History
Early Years
The Java platform and language began as an internal project at Sun Microsystems, Inc in the December 1990 timeframe. Patrick Naughton, an engineer at Sun, had become increasingly frustrated with the state of Sun's C++ and C APIs and tools. While considering moving to Next, Patrick was offered a chance to work on new technology and thus the Stealth Project was started.
The Stealth Project was soon renamed to The Green Project with James Gosling and Mike Sheridan joining Patrick Naughton. They, together with some other engineers, began work in a small office near Sand Hill Dr to develop a new technology. The team originally considered C++ as the language to use, but found C++ problematic for several reasons.
Their platform was an embedded platform and had limited resources. Many members found the C++ was too complicated and developers often misused it. They found C++'s lack of garbage collection to also be a problem. Finally, they wanted a platform that could be easily ported to all types of devices and so James Gosling began work on a new language, called Oak named after the oak tree that stood just outside his office.
Like many stealth projects working on new technology, the team worked long hours and by the summer of 1992, they were able to demo portions of the new platform. Their first attempt focused on building a PDA like device having a highly graphical interface and a smart agent called Duke to assist the user.
The device was named Star7 after a telephone feature activated by *7 on a telephone keypad. The feature enabled users to answer the telephone anywhere. The PDA device itself was demonstrated on September 3, 1992.
In November of that year, the Green Project was renamed to becom FirstPerson. The FirstPerson team was interested in building highly interactive devices and when Time-Warner issued an RFP for a set top box, FirstPerson responded. However, the cable industry felt that their platform gave too much control to the user and so their set top box platform to generate any interest.
In June and July of 1994, after a 3 day brain storm session with John Gage, James Gosling, Bill Joy, Patrick Naughton, Wayne Rosing, and Eric Schmidt, the team retargeted its efforts to use the technology for the internet. They felt that with the advent of the Mosaic browser, the internet was on its way to evolving into the same highly interactive vision that they had had for the cable TV network.
It was also in 1994, that Oak was renamed to Java. A search revealved that Oak had already been copyrighted for another language so the team searched for a new name. The name Java was coined at a local coffee shop frequented by some of the members. And so the name Java, standing for the names of James Gosling, Arthur Van Hoff and Andy Bechtolsheim, stuck.
Java 1.0a was made available in for download in 1994, but the first public release of Java came on May 23, 1995 at the SunWorld conference. The annoucement was made by John Gage, the Director of Science for Sun Microsystems, Inc. His annoucement was accompanied by a surprise announcement by Marc Andreessen, Executive Vice President of Netscape. Marc annouced that Netscape would be including java in Netscape.
In January of 1996, the JavaSoft business group was formed by Sun Microsystems to develop the technology.
Java as a Commercial Product
Additional Information
See also: