History of the Java™ programming language

On 23 May 1995, John Gage, the director of
the Science Office of the Sun Microsystems
along with Marc Andreesen, co-founder and
executive vice president at Netscape
announced to an audience of SunWorld TM
that Java technology wasn't a myth and that
it was a reality and that it was going to be
incorporated into Netscape Navigator. [1]
At the time the total number of people working
on Java was less than 30. [1] This team would
shape the future in the next decade and no
one had any idea as to what was in store.
From being the mind of an unmanned vehicle
on Mars to the operating environment on most
of the consumer electronics, e.g. cable set-top
boxes, VCRs, toasters and also for personal
digital assistants (PDAs). [2] Java has come a
long way from its inception. Let's see how it
all began.
Earlier programming
languages
Before Java emerged as a programming
language, C++ was the dominant player in the
trade. The primary goals that the creators of
Java was to create a language that could
tackle most of the things that C++ offered
while getting rid of some of the more tedious
tasks that came with the earlier languages.
Computer hardware went through a
performance and price revolution from 1972 to
1991. Better, faster hardware was available at
lesser price and the demand for big and
complex software exponentially increased. To
accommodate the demand, new development
technologies were invented.
The C language developed in 1972 by Dennis
Ritchie had taken a decade to become the
most popular language amongst programmers.
But, with time programmers found that
programming in C became tedious with its
structural syntax. [3] Although, people
attempted solving this problem, it would be
later that a new development philosophy was
introduced, one named Object-Oriented
Programming. With OOP, a person may write a
certain code which may be reused later
without rewriting the code over and over again.
In 1979, Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++, an
enhancement to the C language with included
OOP fundamentals and features.