History of JAVA

The Creation of Java 

                                                        (    James Gosling       )

Java was conceived by James Gosling, Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, Ed Frank, and Mike Sheridan at Sun Microsystems, Inc. in 1991. It took 18 months to develop the first working version. This language was initially called “Oak,” but was renamed “Java” in 1995. Between the initial implementation of Oak in the fall of 1992 and the public announcement of Java in thespringof1995,many more people contributed to the design and evolution of the language. Bill Joy, Arthur van Hoff, Jonathan Payne, Frank Yellin, and Tim Lindholm were key contributors to the maturing of the original prototype. Some what surprisingly, the original impetus for Java was not the Internet ! Instead, the primary motivation was the need for a platform-independent(that is, architecture-neutral) language that could be used to create software to be embedded in various consumer electronic devices, such as microwave oven sand remote controls. As you can probably guess, many different types of CPUs are used as controllers. The trouble with C and C++(and most other languages)

is that they are designed to be compiled for as specific target. Although it is possible to compile a C++ program for just about any  type of CPU, to do so requires a full C++ compiler targeted for that CPU. The problem is that compilers are expensive and time-consuming to create. An easier—and more cost-efficient—solution was needed. In an attempt to find such a solution, Gosling and others began work on a portable, platform-independent language that could be used to produce code that would run on a variety of CPUs under differing environments. This effort ultimately led to the creation of Java. About the time that the details of Java were being worked out, a second, and ultimately more important, factor was emerging that would play a crucial role in the future of Java. This second force was, of course, the World Wide Web. Had the Web not taken shape at about the same time that Java was being implemented, Java might have remained a useful but obscure language for programming consumer electronics.Because of the similarities between Java and C++, it is tempting to think of Java as simply the “Internet version of C++.” However, to do so would be a large mistake. Java has significant practical and philosophical differences. While it is true that Java was influenced by C++, it is not an enhanced version of C++.