Happy 25th Birthday, Java!

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This Saturday, May 23, 2020, the Java programming language will be 25 years old!

Sun Microsystems introduced Java at the SunWorld Conference in San Fransisco on Tuesday, May 23, 1995.

This week, Oracle kicked off the birthday festivities with a special one-hour session for Java Champions and Java User Group Leaders on Tuesday followed by a Happy Birthday, Java! session on Wednesday.  The latter featured an all-star cast of Java luminaries providing a retrospective of their Java-related memories and experiences:


Oracle will be providing resources for Java Users Groups to help celebrate this milestone birthday.  For more information, make sure you visit the Our World. Moved by Java and Inside the Java Platform Group web sites.

The Java community has been encouraged to share their own memories and experiences on Twitter using the hashtag, #MovedbyJava.  While I have already done this in less than 280 characters, I thought that I would share one of my memories in a bit more detail:

When Java was first released, I was deep into C++ development at ExxonMobil.  One of my colleagues at the time had embraced Java from the beginning, but I was hesitant to learn the language.  We had many friendly C++/Java debates that our colleagues found entertaining.  I finally started learning Java circa 1999 and was comfortable enough with the language such that I founded the ACGNJ Java Users Group in February 2001 that is still going strong today!  Along with facilitating the Java Users Group all these years, I have presented numerous Java-related topics at Java User Groups and conferences, collaborated on several Java technical articles from 2005 to 2008 with Barry Burd, and writing Java news for InfoQ since May 2016.  Being part of the Java community has been an awesome journey to and I look forward to continued contributions!

"Java is C++ without the guns, knives, and clubs."
-- James Gosling

This has been one of my favorite quotes that I still use in my introductory Java presentations.

Happy 25th Birthday, Java!  I sure look forward to what the next 25 years has in store for this very special language!

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