A History Of Java

We’re taking a closer look at the building blocks of a website. As one of the most influential programming languages alive on the web, Java has some pretty rich history…
Java has become one of the world’s leading programming languages, since it was launched twenty years ago. Named after the Indonesian coffee bean, it emerged after a four-year gestation period while its founder James Gosling attempted to create a universal solution to platform-dependent programming languages. This concept, called Write Once Run Anywhere (WORA), has since become hugely popular among programmers and developers who don’t need to re-code their software according to the quirks and idiosyncrasies of different platforms.
Surprisingly, Java was originally intended to work on the early-’90s equivalent of today’s digital TV boxes, with ‘interactive TV’ lauded as the Next Big Thing. However, the fledgling digital cable industry was not ready for it at the time so Java metamorphosed into a computing language. Its launch coincided with the first mass-market internet browsers like Netscape’s iconic Navigator, which soon adopted Java for the purposes of displaying dynamic web content. At a time when many websites were nothing more than text and the occasional low-res JPG file, Java offered a relatively high-tech way to present moving images like cartoons or animations.
Fast forward to the present day and Java remains a popular aspect of web content. Now onto its ninth edition (confusingly titled Java 8), it is governed by Oracle Corporation following its takeover of Java’s original provider Sun Microsystems in 2010. Java has also become open source, inspiring legions of amateur coders and incurring no setup costs. Easier to learn than the C++ language it was inspired by, and with fewer compatibility issues than Perl, Java’s WORA architecture means it’s still a useful tool for any website requiring dynamic content. That also extends to apps, with much of the software on today’s Android smartphones displaying a translated version of Java.
Examples of Java-powered platforms include Minecraft and OpenOffice, while Java-based apps include Skype and Twitter. It wasn’t unknown for Twitter to crash when it was powered by Ruby on Rails, but the 2012 switch to Java was the answer to their problems with uptime. Many other websites featuring dynamic content also use Java; for example, while it’s not essential for a clothing wholesaler’s website e-commerce, it might be valuable for enabling customers to view 360-degree images of items.
At this stage, it’s important to make the distinction between Java and Javascript. The latter is a scripting language for displaying code in a browser, whereas its abbreviated namesake is a programming language that underpins applications on either a browser or virtual machine. It’s also worth noting that JavaFX for Android/iOS has no official support, meaning it may lack stability.
If you have a need for your WordPress website to incorporate Java-compatible content, there are plugins like Quercus that can be called upon – iOS-based apps can use software like RoboVM. As new versions of Java are launched roughly once every two years, content created today should remain stable and up to date for some time. Perhaps the greatest risk to Java’s success could be that HTML5 will provide an even more stable platform for many years to come. While previous versions of HTML relied on Java to program the behaviour of individual web pages, developers may increasingly migrate towards the all-in-one solution represented by HTML5. Java should still remain a cornerstone of active website content, making it worthy of consideration by anyone intending to launch an interactive or dynamic website.
A powerful web host goes hand in hand with a robust programming language, and we’ve got just the ticket over on our website…