Java was first named Oak, after the tree outside its creator's office
When James Gosling, Mike Sheridan and Patrick Naughton started their language project at Sun Microsystems in June 1991, Gosling named it Oak after a tree visible from his office. It later became Green, and finally Java, after an Indonesian coffee. Released in 1995, it grew into one of the most widely used programming languages ever.
Java's big promise was 'write once, run anywhere'. Instead of compiling to one kind of processor, Java programs compile to bytecode that any Java virtual machine can execute, whatever the hardware underneath. Gosling gave it syntax resembling C and C++ so programmers would feel at home, but stripped out many of their low-level features and made it memory-safe and object-oriented. Its designers wanted it simple and familiar, portable across architectures, and threaded and dynamic.
Java 1.0 arrived publicly in 1996 with free runtimes for popular platforms and configurable security that could restrict file and network access. Web browsers quickly added support for Java applets inside pages, fuelling its rise. From Java 2 in 1998 it came in editions for desktops, servers and mobile devices. Sun twice approached standards bodies to formalise the language but withdrew, leaving Java governed through its own Java Community Process.
Openness came gradually. Sun released most of its virtual machine as free software on 13 November 2006 and completed the job on 8 May 2007, apart from a small portion it did not own. Oracle bought Sun around 2010; Gosling resigned on 2 April that year, and Oracle soon sued Google over Java's use in Android. Today the open-source OpenJDK is the official reference implementation and the default on almost all Linux distributions, while Oracle offers its own HotSpot virtual machine. The browser plugin was retired starting with JDK 9.
Java runs on everything from laptops and game consoles to data centres and supercomputers. GitHub ranked it third most popular in 2022, though its use has slowly declined as other languages built on the Java virtual machine gain ground. As of mid-2026, versions 8, 11, 17, 21 and 25 held long-term support status.
Source: Java (programming language)
