JavaOne 2026 Session

Summary

May 23rd, 1995, saw the launch of not just a new programming language but an entire development and deployment platform. Initially targeted at the brand-new world of browsers and the World Wide Web, it quickly became the de facto standard for internet-scale enterprise applications.

Remarkably, thirty years later, it is still always in the top three most popular languages in use by developers.

How did this happen?

In this session, we’ll take a whirlwind tour of the history of Java, recalling many of the milestones along the way.

I started working for Sun Microsystems in February 1996, roughly the same week JDK 1.0 was launched. Through fourteen years at Sun, five at Oracle and nearly ten at Azul, I’ll bring plenty of anecdotes about Java’s history (and some souvenirs). Be prepared for some serious developer nostalgia!