Getting to Know Java - Beginning Java Programming: The Object-Oriented Approach - page 12

The chapter then covers the basic concepts of the Java language structure. You will read about vari-
ous concepts such as classes, identifiers, Java keywords, variables, methods, comments, and naming
conventions in depth. After that, you'll learn about Java data types. First, the various primitive data
types will be covered, followed by a discussion of literals, operators, arrays, and type casting. The
BMI example introduced in Chapter 1 is used to demonstrate and clarify the new concepts. This
chapter is a very important one because it lays the foundation for all subsequent chapters. Many of
the concepts that are introduced here will be elaborated on in later chapters.

a short Java history

In 1991, Sun Microsystems funded the research project called “Green” to design a program-
ming language to be used in intelligent consumer electronic devices, like televisions, VCRs, and
washing machines. Since home appliance processor chips change on a continuous basis, the
programming language used needed to be extremely portable. Existing programming languages
such as C++ were clearly not suitable. Often, the embedded language was tied closely to the
appliance processor, and a new language needed to be developed. This new language was origi-
nally termed Oak (referring to the tree that was outside the main developer's, James Gosling's,
window), but was quickly renamed Java. The use of Java for home appliance applications turned
out to be initially unsuccessful, but the emergence of the Web gave it a new future. In 1994, the
first Java-enabled web browser HotJava was developed. A year later, Netscape incorporated Java
support into its web browser. Other companies quickly followed and Java's popularity rapidly
rose. Sun released Java 1.0 to the public in 1995. In 2007, Sun made Java's core code available
as open source under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). In 2009, Sun was
acquired by Oracle, which is currently continuing the development of Java. Table 2-1 gives an
overview of the major releases, together with some key characteristics. Note that the versions
were originally referred to as JDKs (Java Development Kits) and later rebranded into J2SE
(Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition).

table 2-1: Characteristics of Major Java Releases

maJor release date Key char acteristics

JDK 1.0 1996 First stable version of Java

JDK 1.1 1997 Inner classes; Java beans; JDBC; RMI; Just in Time (JIT) compiler for

Windows platforms

J2SE 1.2 1998 Swing classes; Java IDL; Collections

J2SE 1.3 2000 Java platform debugger architecture (JPDA); JavaSound; HotSpot JVM

J2SE 1.4 2002 Regular expressions; IPv6 support; image I/O API; non-blocking I/O

(nio); XML parser and XSLT processor

J2SE 5.0 2004 Generics; annotations; autoboxing; enumerations; varargs; for each

loop

Java SE 6 2006 Improved GUI support; improved web service support