JAVA

Earlier programming languages

Before Java emerged as a programming language, C++ was the dominant player in the trade. The primary goal of 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 ever lower prices, 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 working on PCs and similar platforms (other languages, like COBOL and FORTRAN, dominated the mainframe market). But, with time programmers found that programming in C became tedious with its structural syntax.`{`3`}`Although people attempted to solve this problem, it would be later that a new development philosophy was introduced, one named Object-Oriented Programming (OOP). With OOP, one can write code that can be reused later without needing to rewrite the code over and over again. In 1979, Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++, an enhancement to the C language with included OOP fundamentals and features. Sun generated revenue from Java through the selling of licenses for specialized products such as the Java Enterprise System.

The Green team

In December of 1990, a project was initiated behind closed doors with the aim to create a programming tool that could render obsolete the C and C++ programming languages. Engineer Patrick Naughton had become extremely frustrated with the state of Sun's C++ and C APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) and tools. While he was considering to move towards NeXT, he was offered a chance to work on new technology and the Stealth Project was started, a secret nobody but he knew.
This Stealth Project was later named the Green Project when James Gosling and Mike Sheridan joined Patrick.As the Green Project teethed, the prospects of the project started becoming clearer to the engineers working on it. No longer did it aim to create a new language far superior to the present ones, but it aimed to target devices other than the computer.
Staffed at 13 people, they began work in a small office on Sand Hill Road in Menlo Park, California. This team came to be called the Green Team henceforth in time. The project they underwent was chartered by Sun Microsystems to anticipate and plan for the ``next wave`` in computing. For the team, this meant at least one significant trend, that of the convergence of digitally controlled consumer devices and computers.

Reshaping thought

The team started thinking of replacing C++ with a better version, a faster version, a responsive version. But the one thing they hadn't thought of, as of yet, was that the language they were aiming for had to be developed for an embedded system with limited resources. An embedded system is a computer system scaled to a minimalistic interface demanding only a few functions from its design. For such a system, C++ or any successor would seem too large as all the languages at the time demanded a larger footprint than what was desired. The team thus had to think in a different way to go about solving all these problems.
Co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Bill Joy, envisioned a language combining the power of Mesa and C in a paper named Further he wrote for the engineers at Sun. Gathering ideas, Gosling began work on enhancing C++ and named it ``C++ ++ --``, a pun on the evolutionary structure of the language's name. The ++ and -- meant, putting in and taking out stuff. He soon abandoned the name and called it Oak after the tree that stood outside his office.