JAVA History and Versions

The History of JAVA

JAVA is a high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. It was originally called OAK, and was designed for handheld devices and set-top boxes. Oak was unsuccessful, so in 1995 Sun changed the name to Java and modified the language to take advantage of the burgeoning World Wide Web. 

JAVA versions

Most of the JAVA on the web is either Java 1.0 or Java 1.1 - they differ mainly in the way they handle "events".  Both versions are loosely referred to as Java 1. In Java 1.2 they made some rather big changes so they decided to call it Java 2 from then on. 

• JAVA 1 = JAVA 1.0 through JAVA 1.1x
• JAVA 2 = JAVA 1.2.x through 1.4.3 - JAVA 2 is officially called J2SE (Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition)

JAVA 1.0.x - the first release was in early 1996. 1.0. came out in 1996, followed closely by v1.0.2, which added an improved set of graphics classes.

JAVA 1.1.x - came out in early 1997, and added a new event handling mechanism. By now the primitive nature of the AWT (Abstract Windows Toolkit) had became apparent. 1997 saw the introduction of the Java Foundation Classes which supersedes and includes AWT.  These new components were called Swing.

JAVA 1.2.x through 1.4.3 (i.e. Java 2 or J2SE) - Sun rebadged Java in December 1998 when Java 1.2 became Java 2.

JAVA Beans

Along with J2SE, JavaBeans came into existence, which is an internal component architecture for the Java platform.  JavaBeans technology is the component architecture for the Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition (J2SE). Components (JavaBeans) are reusable software programs that you can develop and assemble easily to create sophisticated applications. JavaBeans technology is based on the JavaBeans specification.

The Bean Builder - a simple component assembler that demonstrates the visual construction of applications using component assembly mechanisms.