Chapter 1 Genesis of Java

1.1 Introduction

Java has developed from James Gosling’s vision to a mission that rives the development world today. A high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems, Java was originally designed for handheld devices and set-top boxes. Initially titled Oak, in 1995, Sun changed the name to Java and modified the language to take advantage of the opportunities presented by the World Wide Web.

Java is a general programming language, many characteristics of which make it well adapted to the WWW application. Small Java applications known as applets, which can be downloaded from server, run easily on any Java-compatible browser.

So far,Sun Microsystems has published three versions of the Java platform—the Standard Edition(J2SE), the Enterprise Edition (J2EE), and the Micro Edition (J2ME).