The Java language is officially three years old this Saturday, the 23rd, at least if you take its birthday as being May 23rd, 1995, when it was officially announced at SunWorld in San Francisco. Java, of course, really began in 1991 as part of the Green Project led by Patrick Naughton, Mike Sheridan and James Gosling. Some 18 months later, that project produced an interactive, handheld home entertainment device called StarSeven, with its own processor independent language written by Gosling, then called Oak. The Green team became known as FirstPerson. From that came an implementation of a Java-based web browser, originally called WebRunner and later HotJava that supported dynamically executable content for the first time. In March 1995, the source code for Java 1.0a2 was made available on the internet for free. That’s when Java fever officially started. The technology got a boost from an endorsement by Marc Andreessen of Netscape Communications Corp, and downloads multiplied explosively as the word spread. By the May 23rd announcement, Andreessen had agreed to integrate Java technology into the Netscape browser. Java’s by no mean grown up yet, and it’s still too early to predict just how important it will ultimately become. But it’s certainly attracted a lot of attention over its first three years of life.
