The rise of Java
The world of computer programming was dominated by a handful of languages, with each having its own strengths and weaknesses. But then, in the mid-1990s, a new player entered the scene: Java.
Java was created by a team of engineers at Sun Microsystems, led by James Gosling, with the goal of developing a language that would allow consumer electronics to communicate with each other. At first, Java was not widely known or used, but that all changed with the rise of the World Wide Web.
Java quickly gained popularity as a language for building dynamic and interactive websites, thanks to its unique “write once, run anywhere” capability. Code written in Java could be run on any device that had a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) installed, regardless of the underlying hardware and operating system. This was a major advantage over other programming languages of the time, which often had to be recompiled for each specific platform.
Another key feature that made Java so appealing was its built-in garbage collection, which automatically frees up memory that is no longer being used by the program. This was a huge improvement over traditional programming languages, where developers had to manually manage memory allocation and deallocation.
