Java Turns 25 — Brief Timeline
Complete Journey of the world’s most popular programming language
The Java programming language is celebrating its silver anniversary (25 years) on May 23, 2020, so let’s explore the complete journey of Java.
Oracle and the community began celebrating the 25th anniversary of Java, the Silver Jubilee as traditions say, completed on May 23, 2020. Let’s have a quick look at a brief timeline of Java, the #1 programming language.
1991 — Oak at Sun Microsystem
Conceptualized as ‘Oak’ at Sun Microsystem.
1993 — Came into Market
Initially used for TV set-top box interactive system.
1995 — Beginning of Everything
Write Once, Run Anywhere !
Officially launched as Java Programming Language at SunWorld Conference. Sun introduces the slogan “Write Once Run Anywhere”
1996 — JDK 1.0 Released
Java Development Kit (JDK) 1.0 released.
The concept of Enterprise only came in version 1.2 (1998).
In 1.3 and 1.4 versions, there were bug fixes, with 1.4 being the version responsible for bringing Assertions.
2004 — First Game-Changing
JavaSE 5.0 released. By the end of 2004, Java is running on 1.5 billion devices.
2005–10th Birthday
Java celebrates its 10th birthday with 4.5 million developers, 2.5 billion Java-enabled devices.
2006 — Performance and Library Improvements
Java/JDK open-sourced. Java SE6 released. Version 6 (without the suffix “.0”) was launched, with performance and library improvements.
2010 — Oracle Acquired
Oracle acquires Sun Microsystems with Java and all other products.
2011 — Library Improvements
Java SE 7.0 released. Version 7 (without the suffix “.0”) was launched, with performance and library improvements.
2014 — Second Game Changing
Lambdas, Default Methods, and Streams API
Java SE 8.0 released in May 2014. After 10 years of version 5.0, the proposal brought here impacted the way we would write Java code.
Finally, version 8 brings a great evolution in the handling of Collections, following the principles of functional programming, with the Streams API. This API allowed all Collections in Java to be data sources for streams. All of this through the stream() method.
2017 — More performance and productivity
Oracle announces biannual time-based release cadence for Java. 12 million developers run Java worldwide.
2020 — Silver Jubilee
Java celebrates its 25th birthday. Java 15 released on September 15, 2020.
Closing Thoughts and Conclusions —
Java is loved by some, hated by others, but widely used by a large number of computer professionals. Java is definitely one of my favorite programming languages; mostly because of the availability of enterprise-class libraries.
My personal experience in Java started during my college time, through programming classes and the research groups I participated in.
Java has not stuck in the past, nor has it lost its essence, actually, it aged well like a good wine. It has been an incredible journey so far!
“Happy 25th Birthday, Java!”
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