Java (programming language)

"Java language" redirects here. For the natural language from the Indonesian island of Java, see Javanese language.

This article is about a programming language. For the software package downloaded from java.com, see Java SE.

Not to be confused with JavaScript.

Java

Paradigm	Multi-paradigm: Object-oriented (class-based), structured, imperative, generic, reflective, concurrent
Designed by	James Gosling
Developer	Sun Microsystems (now owned by Oracle Corporation)
First appeared	May 23, 1995; 21 years ago[1]
Typing discipline	Static, strong, safe, nominative, manifest
License	GNU General Public License, Java Community Process
Filename extensions	.java, .class, .jar
Website	www.oracle.com/java/
Major implementations
OpenJDK, GNU Compiler for Java (GCJ), many others
Dialects
Generic Java, Pizza
Influenced by
Ada 83, C++,[2] C#,[3] Eiffel,[4] Generic Java, Mesa,[5] Modula-3,[6] Oberon,[7] Objective-C,[8] UCSD Pascal,[9][10] Object Pascal[11]
Influenced
Ada 2005, BeanShell, C#, Chapel,[12] Clojure, ECMAScript, Fantom, Groovy, Hack,[13] Haxe, J#, JavaScript, Kotlin, PHP, Python, Scala, Seed7, Vala
Java Programming at Wikibooks

Java is a general-purpose computer programming language that is concurrent, class-based, object-oriented,^[14] and specifically designed to have as few implementation dependencies as possible. It is intended to let application developers "write once, run anywhere" (WORA),^[15] meaning that compiled Java code can run on all platforms that support Java without the need for recompilation.^[16] Java applications are typically compiled to bytecode that can run on any Java virtual machine (JVM) regardless of computer architecture. As of 2016, Java is one of the most popular programming languages in use,^{[17][18][19][20]} particularly for client-server web applications, with a reported 9 million developers.^[21] Java was originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems (which has since been acquired by Oracle Corporation) and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++, but it has fewer low-level facilities than either of them.
The original and reference implementation Java compilers, virtual machines, and class libraries were originally released by Sun under proprietary licences. As of May 2007, in compliance with the specifications of the Java Community Process, Sun relicensed most of its Java technologies under the GNU General Public License. Others have also developed alternative implementations of these Sun technologies, such as the GNU Compiler for Java (bytecode compiler), GNU Classpath (standard libraries), and IcedTea-Web (browser plugin for applets).
The latest version is Java 8, which is the only version currently supported for free by Oracle, although earlier versions are supported both by Oracle and other companies on a commercial basis