Java

Most computer bookstores today carry more Java programming books than any other language. Even so, many software developers are still unfamiliar with Java as a programming language much less the overall Java environment and all it encompasses. Java's popularity has been fueled by its adoption as a de facto standard for programming Internet and intranet applications at a time when both of these areas are seeing exponential growth. There are a number of different Java environment subsets and APIs; however the Java language is common to all of these. This section starts by discussing the Java language and then provides an overview of the four primary Java environment subsets: Java Card, Embedded Java, Personal Java, and the complete Java environment. While the Java language is very stable in its current state, many of the Java APIs continue to evolve. Our discussion of Java APIs is thus limited to some of the more popular APIs that were defined as of late 1998 when this book was written.

Java was developed in the early 1990s at Sun Microsystems Labs by a team led by James Gosling. At the time, Gosling was part of a team developing a prototype hand-held controller for consumer electronics projects. The team wanted a simple, object-oriented, and familiar language for their project. They started with C++ but after several weeks decided its complexity was excessive, given the goals of their project, internally referred to as the "Green" project. A number of other languages were considered and rejected as alternatives. In the end, Gosling and his team decided to develop a new language which they called "Oak." A working prototype of their first device, the "Star 9," was developed to test the language but never saw its way into production. In late 1993, however, as the world wide web was just starting to become popular, Gosling reconsidered Oak as a language that could be used for Internet applications. By early 1995, Sun had developed a web browser, called WebRunner, capable of executing small Java programs, called applets, that were downloaded when referenced on a web page. In May of 1995, the language and browser were renamed and introduced to the public as the Java language and HotJava browser.