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Thirty years ago, on May 23rd, 1995, at the Sun World conference in San Francisco, California, Sun Microsystems formally introduced the Java programming language.

Based on C++, Sun characterized Java as a:

Simple, object-oriented, distributed, interpreted, robust, secure, architecture-neutral, portable, high-performance, multithreaded dynamic language.

James Gosling, the father of Java, had a more succinct definition:

Java is C++ without guns, knives, and clubs.

Originally named Oak (reportedly due to the oak tree outside Gosling’s office window), the creation of Java dates back to December 1990 as part of Sun’s Green Project. Gosling, Patrick Naughton and Mike Sheridan wanted a language for consumer applications with requirements that it be architecture agnostic and object-oriented. In September 1992, they introduced Star7, a personal digital assistant that included a TV remote control and TV guide, among other features, that was operated through a user interface on a 5-inch screen.

Duke, the official Java mascot, was also introduced as “the embodiment of the ‘agent’” in the Star7 user interface. Created and drawn by Joe Palrang, then with Sun Microsystems, Duke was characterized as a “friendly guy that followed you around and could help you out.“

From applets to generics to lambdas to var to records and sealed classes to virtual threads; from Java EE to Jakarta EE; and from an average three year release cycle to one that is every six months, Java has significantly grown over these past 30 years having survived some low points in its history that included the reputation of the language of being “slow” and many developers having considered the language as “dead.”

Oracle’s latest initiative is based on a September 2022 blog post, Paving the on-ramp, by Brian Goetz, Java Language Architect at Oracle. After four rounds of preview, JEP 512: Compact Source Files and Instance Main Methods, finalizes this feature that aims to “evolve the Java language so that students can write their first programs without needing to understand language features designed for large programs.” More details on this feature may be found in this specification document by Gavin Bierman, Consulting Member of Technical Staff at Oracle.

Oracle marked this milestone with its 30th Birthday Event, hosted by Java Developer Advocates, Ana-Maria Mihalceanu, Billy Korando and Nicolai Parlog, along with Sharat Chander, Senior Director of Product Management and Developer Engagement at Oracle. This special six-hour event featured a variety of guests discussing a range of topics.

Oracle luminaries, Mark Reinhold, Chief Architect, Java Platform Group, Goetz, Bierman, Georges Saab, Senior Vice President, Software Development, Java Platform Group, and Stuart Marks, Consulting Member of Technical Staff (AKA Dr. Deprecator), discussed: the stewardship of Java; paving the on-ramp and lambdas; a Java language update; growing the language; and Java Collections, respectively.

Community advocates and activists, Bruno Souza, the Brazilian Java Man, Mohammed Aboullaite, Senior Backend Engineer at Spotify, and Laurentiu Spilca, Principal Development Consultant at Endava, discussed: the developer impact in the Java community; community outreach in Africa and the Middle East; and outreach to beginners through non-english content, respectively.

JetBrains Developer Advocates, Mala Gupta and Marit van Dijk, provided numerous IntelliJ IDEA tips and tricks that included how to use Junie, the IntelliJ IDEA coding assistant.

Heather Stephens, Head of Java in Education at Oracle, interviewed Sandy Czajka, Math and Computer Science Teacher at Riverside Brookfield High School in Illinois, on teaching Java at the high school level. Stephens later interviewed three students representing Stanford University, the University of Washington and the University of California, Berkeley, with their thoughts on Java.

Venkat Subramanian, President at Agile Developer, Inc., presented “The Hidden Innovations of Java,” which included topics such as invokedynamic, one of the five method invocation opcodes; lazy evaluations in streams; and smart indentation related to here documents, also known as heredocs.

Korando interviewed Gosling, who provided his own retrospective on creating Java and its current state.

Will Java be with us in another 30 years? Today’s young Java developers will likely be able to see if that comes true. However, with a vibrant Java community that has a passion for the language, Java may celebrate its 60th birthday in 2055.