Evolution of Java

Lets now see how Java evolved right from its initial development until now:

•The initial version of Java was 1.0
•Next version of Java was 1.1. In this version new libraries were added, event handling model was improved and other features were introduced.

•The next version of Java was “Java 2” where 2 indicates “second generation”.
•In Java 2, 2 is the release number, but the internal version number was 1.2 which referred the libraries version number.
•With Java 2, the product was repackaged as J2SE (Java 2 Platform Standard Edition)
•In Java 2 new features like Swings and Collections framework were introduced.

•Next release was J2SE 1.3. In this version, no major features were added.


•Next release was J2SE 1.4. In this version, new features were introduced like, chained exceptions, keyword assert and some changes were made to the I/O subsystem. Also changes were made to the collections and network framework.

•Next release was J2SE 5. This is a revolutionary release which increased the scope and power of Java language.
•In J2SE 5 many new features were introduced like:
- Generics
- Annotations
- Auto boxing and un-boxing
- Enumerations etc..
•Since J2SE 5 was a major release which consisted of adding so many new features, it was called as J2SE 5 instead of J2SE 1.5 and the developer’s kit was called JDK 1.5

•Next release was Java SE 6. In this release Java dropped the platform number 2 and changed it to 6. The official name of this release is “Java Platform Standard Edition 6”. The internal developer version number is 1.6.
•Java SE 6 includes major changes to the libraries.

•The latest release is Java SE 7.