Java An object-oriented language originally developed at Sun by James Gosling (and known by the name "Oak") with the intention of being the successor to C++ (the project was however originally sold to Sun as an embedded language for use in set-top boxes).

Java

An object-oriented language originally developed at
Sun by James Gosling (and known by the name "Oak") with the
intention of being the successor to C++ (the project was
however originally sold to Sun as an embedded language for use in
set-top boxes). After the great Internet explosion of 1993-1994,
Java was hacked into a byte-interpreted language and became the focus
of a relentless hype campaign by Sun, which touted it as the new
language of choice for distributed applications.

Java is indeed a stronger and cleaner design than C++ and has been
embraced by many in the hacker community - but it has been a
considerable source of frustration to many others, for reasons
ranging from uneven support on different Web browser platforms,
performance issues, and some notorious deficiencies of some of the
standard toolkits (AWT in particular). Microsoft's determined
attempts to corrupt the language (which it rightly sees as a threat
to its OS monopoly) have not helped. As of 1999, these issues are
still in the process of being resolved.

Despite many attractive features and a good design, it is difficult
to find people willing to praise Java who have tried to implement a
complex, real-world system with it (but to be fair it is early days
yet, and no other language has ever been forced to spend its
childhood under the limelight the way Java has). On the other
hand, Java has already been a big win in academic circles,
where it has taken the place of Pascal as the preferred tool
for teaching the basics of good programming to the next generation
of hackers.