Introduction to JAVA

Introduction to JAVA-
Before starting to learn Java, let us plunge into its history and see how the language originated. In 1990, Sun Microsystems Inc. (US) has conceived a project to develop software for consumer electronic devices that could be controlled by a remote. This project was called Stealth Project but later its name was changed to Green Project.

In Jan of 1991, Bill Joy, James Gosling, Mike Sheradin, Patrick Naughton and several others met in Aspen, Colorado to discuss this project. Mike Sheradin was focused on Business Development, Patrick Naughton worked on the Graphics systems and James Gosling was to identify the proper programming language for the project. Gosling thought C and C++ could be used to develop the project. But the problem he faced with them is that they were system dependent languages and hence could not be used various processors which the electronics devices might use. So he start to develop a new language which was completely system independent. This language was initially called as OAK.  Since this name was registered by other company, later it was changed to JAVA.

WHY THE NAME IS JAVA? James Gosling and his team members were consuming a lot of coffee while developing this language. They felt that they were able to develop a better language because of the good quality of coffee they consumed. So the coffee had its own role in developing this language and good quality of coffee was exported to the entire world from a place called ‘JAVA ISLAND‘. Hence they fixed the name of the place for the language as JAVA. And the symbol for JAVA Language is coffee cup and saucer.

By September of 1994, Naughton and Jonathan Payne started writing WebRunner-a Java based Web browser, which was later renamed as HotJava. By October 1994, HotJava was stable and was demonstrated to Sun executives. HotJava was the first browser, having the capabilities of executing applets, which are programs designed to run dynamically on Internet. This time, Java’s potential in the context of the World Wide Web was recognized. 

Sun formally announced Java and HotJava at SunWorld conference in 1995. Soon after, Netscape Inc. announced that it would incorporate Java support in its browser Netscape Navigater. Later, Microsoft also announced that they would support Java in their Internet Explorer Web browser.  
Java Versions, Features and History-

• Released on 23 January 1996, JDK 1.0 version.
• Released on 19 February 1997 JDK 1.1 version.
  New features in JDK 1.1
  1. JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)
  2. Inner Classes
  3. Java Beans
  4. RMI (Remote Method Invocation)
  5. Reflection (introspection only)
• Released on 8 December 1998 J2SE 1.2 version.
  New features in J2SE 1.2
  1. Collections framework.
  2. Java String memory map for constants.
  3. Just In Time (JIT) compiler.
  4. Jar Signer for signing Java ARchive (JAR) files.
  5. Policy Tool for granting access to system resources.
  6. Java Foundation Classes (JFC) which consists of Swing 1.0, Drag and Drop, and Java 2D class libraries.
  7. Java Plug-in
  8. Scrollable result sets, BLOB, CLOB, batch update, user-defined types in JDBC.
  9. Audio support in Applets.
• Released on 8 May 2000 J2SE 1.3 version.
  New features in J2SE 1.3
  1. Java Sound
  2. Jar Indexing
  3. A huge list of enhancements in almost all the java area.
• Released on 6 February 2002 J2SE 1.4 version.
  New features in J2SE 1.4
  1. XML Processing
  2. Java Print Service
  3. Logging API
  4. Java Web Start
  5. JDBC 3.0 API
  6. Assertions
  7. Preferences API
  8. Chained Exception
  9. IPv6 Support
  10. Regular Expressions
  11. Image I/O API
• Released on 30 September 2004 J2SE 1.5 version.
  New features in J2SE 1.5
  1. Generics
  2. Enhanced for Loop
  3. Autoboxing/Unboxing
  4. Typesafe Enums
  5. Varargs
  6. Static Import
  7. Metadata (Annotations)
  8. Instrumentation
• Released on 11 December 2006 J2SE 1.6 version.
  New features in J2SE 1.6
  1. Scripting Language Support
  2. JDBC 4.0 API
  3. Java Compiler API
  4. Pluggable Annotations
  5. Native PKI, Java GSS, Kerberos and LDAP support.
  6. Integrated Web Services.
  7. Lot more enhancements.
• Released on 28 July 2011 J2SE 1.7 version.
  New features in J2SE 1.7
  1. Strings in switch Statement
  2. Type Inference for Generic Instance Creation
  3. Multiple Exception Handling
  4. Support for Dynamic Languages
  5. Try with Resources
  6. Java nio Package
  7. Binary Literals, underscore in literals
  8. Diamond Syntax
  9. Automatic null Handling