Sun s Java History
Sun’s Java History
In the beginning of this book we talked briefly about the history of the Java language, but we did not cover how it was conceptualized and some of the interesting history of the language, before it was named Java. Sun released the Java language on May 23, 1995. The real development of the language started back in 1991, when Sun instructed a group of developers to create the next wave in computing. The team, nicknamed the “Green Project,” developed a hand-held device called the *7 (Star Seven), which controlled a wide range of entertainment platforms and appliances. During the development of the *7, the design team came up with a processor-independent programming language, which they initially named Oak.
The design team first envisioned the *7 as a prototype for interactive television, but the television market was not yet ready for this technology. At the same time, the new concept of a public internet was starting to gain popularity, and the two technologies were a perfect match. The first Web browser was called Mosaic (developed by the National Center of Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois), and it allowed easy use of graphics for Internet sites. The Sun development team started to work on a Java clone of Mosaic, which they named WebRunner (see Figure D.1). WebRunner was later renamed HotJava Browser (see Figure D.2).
Amazingly, WebRunner was still being developed in 1994, and by the spring of 1995, Java was being incorporated into Netscape, which was the most popular
Web browser at that time. The Java language is still less than 10 years old, and it is one of the dominant languages in the marketplace. One of the reasons for the success of this language is that the source code is free. Providing the programming language documentation, compiler, run-time environment, and so on for free allowed people to try out the software and find most of the critical bugs quickly.
Sun’s Java division now employs more than 1000 people, and downloads of the JDK from Sun’s Web site number over 10,000 a day. More than 15,000 developers attended the JavaOne programming conference, the largest turnout ever for a single programming development conference.
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