Java at 30: How a language designed for a failed gadget became a global powerhouse

Some programming languages, such as Rust, Go, or TypeScript, are cool. Others, including Cobol and Java, are regarded as dull. However, while Java, which turned 30 on May 23, may not be the most exciting language, it remains one of the most important languages in use today. 

First released by Sun Microsystems on May 23, 1995, Java’s journey from a niche project for consumer electronics to a global powerhouse in enterprise, cloud, and web development is a story of vision and adaptability.

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While Java may have just turned 30, its history is far longer. Java’s roots trace back to 1991, when Sun engineers James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton set out to create a language for interactive television and embedded devices. This was called the Green Project. Its goal was not so much to create a new language as to build what we’d call an Internet of Things controller. Tim Lindholm, another early Java developer, described it as “a sort of cross between a large PDA and a super-duper remote control.“

The device, Star7, was a SPARC processor-based, handheld wireless personal digital assistant with a 5″ color LCD. Alas, it was too advanced and expensive for its time, and the gadget failed to find a market. 

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The language, though, was another story. Initially dubbed “Oak,” this version of Java used a C++-style syntax, but as Gosling said about Oak/Java, it was “C++ without guns and knives.” Why not just use C++? The language wouldn’t easily work for their goals of, as Lindholm put it, making applications that could be safely moved “about the internet, and at least hard to make them run on different architectures. Also, we felt that C++ was sufficiently hard to program that less-skilled programmers, who we hoped to reach, would have difficulty with it.”

Gosling’s vision for Java included automatic memory management (garbage collection), which reduces errors and security vulnerabilities common in C++’s manual memory management. He also suggested Java’s “write once, run anywhere” philosophy, enabled by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), made Java highly portable and platform-independent, whereas C++ code must be compiled separately for every platform. 

All those benefits were well and good, but what use would a language designed for a failed consumer electronics project be for anything else? Fortunately, Gosling and his crew were finishing up Java just as the World Wide Web was emerging to the public in 1993. Java proved to be the right language at the right time. 

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The language’s defining feature, its platform independence, was a game-changer. Unlike other languages that require code to be rewritten for different operating systems, Java programs are compiled into bytecode, which runs on any device with a JVM. This “write once, run anywhere” philosophy quickly made Java the language of choice for web applets and, later, for enterprise applications.

To highlight Java’s usefulness, in 1995, Gosling unveiled a browser called WebRunner. This prototype web browser was never a commercial success, but it demonstrated how a web browser could present HTML content mixed with Java Applets. 

Things took off from there. First, WebRunner became HotJava, and then java.sun.com, Java’s home website, officially opened to the public. Sun couldn’t use the name Oak because of trademark issues. After long nights and much debate, the team decided that their drink of choice, coffee, would inspire the language’s name. 

Java would quickly evolve. Its first significant change came with the release of Java Development Kit 1.1 in 1997. This version introduced JavaBeans, which made object-oriented programming much easier for developers. It also added Java Database Connectivity (JDBC). This standard Java application programming interface (API) enables Java programs to work with databases.

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In 1998, Java underwent a change with the addition of the Swing library, which improved Java’s graphical user interface (GUI) capabilities, Java plug-ins, and the Java Collections framework. Perhaps the most visible difference was that Java was broken down into three varieties: J2SE (Standard Edition) for general-purpose desktop applications; J2EE (Enterprise Edition) for server-side applications; and J2ME (Micro Edition) for mobile devices and embedded systems. All three versions are alive and well today. 

While the language would continue to see many improvements over the coming years, perhaps the most important change was when Sun open-sourced Java in 2006. The Java reference implementation is Open Java Development Kit (OpenJDK), which is free and open-sourced under the GNU General Public License (GPL) version 2, with Classpath Exception. 

This exception allows you to link Java system libraries with your code, regardless of your code’s license, and to distribute the resulting executable under your terms of choice. This exception can make using Java a little tricky in some situations. Just ask Google, which had a long fight with Oracle, Java’s current owner, over its use of Java in Android. 

Java was also important for open-source software in a way that often gets overlooked. As Brian Fox, founder of Software Composition Analysis (SCA) tool company Sonatype, told The New Stack, Java ARchive (JAR) files made easily usable code modules, while Apache Maven‘s arrival made Java dependency management possible. 

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These concepts made building open-source projects from code much easier. Before that stage, Fox said, “I distinctly remember the first time I was actually able to build an open-source project. You could look at the code and say, ‘I want to change it this way,’ but you might spend a week just trying to figure out how to build something.” Until Linus Torvalds created Git, you could argue that the JAR and Maven code package approach was the most significant improvement in building open-source programs. 

When Oracle bought Sun, the company closed many Sun projects, but continued to support Java. The Java community, via the Java Community Process (JCP), still has a say, but Oracle calls the shots. 

Over the next three decades, Java has evolved with the changing technology landscape. From its early days powering dynamic web content, Java has grown to dominate enterprise software, mobile applications, and, more recently, cloud-native development and big data solutions. The language’s robust ecosystem, including frameworks such as Spring Boot, Jakarta EE, and Hibernate, has made it indispensable for organizations seeking reliability, scalability, and security.

Unlike other older languages, such as Cobol and Fortran — which are still used, but almost always in legacy projects — Java has constantly evolved to meet new demands while maintaining backward compatibility. 

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Despite the rise of newer languages like Kotlin and Scala, Java remains one of the most widely used programming languages globally. According to the ZDNET Index of Programming Language Popularity, Java, along with Python and JavaScript, is one of the three most popular languages. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why. Java’s versatility, its support for cloud-native architectures, and its ability to handle the demands of AI and big data ensure that the language will continue to shape the future of software development.

Will Java ever be a sexy, hot language? Probably not. It’s a little slow, memory management can be a pain, and its verbosity and complex syntax annoy the heck out of some programmers. With all that said, Java is a vital language and will be for decades to come.