Java Versions

JDK Versions

The various JDK versions are:

  1. JDK Alpha and Beta (1995): Sun announced Java in September 23, 1995.
  2. JDK 1.0 (January 23, 1996): Originally called Oak (named after the oak tree outside James Gosling's office). Renamed to Java 1 in JDK 1.0.2.
  3. JDK 1.1 (February 19, 1997): Introduced AWT event model, inner class, JavaBean, JDBC, and RMI.
  4. J2SE 1.2 (JDK 1.2) (December 8, 1998): Re-branded as "Java 2" and renamed JDK to J2SE (Java 2 Standard Edition). Also released J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) and J2ME (Java 2 Micro Edition). Included JFC (Java Foundation Classes - Swing, Accessibility API, Java 2D, Pluggable Look and Feel and Drag and Drop). Introduced Collection Framework and JIT compiler.
  5. J2SE 1.3 (JDK 1.3) (May 8, 2000): Introduced Hotspot JVM.
  6. J2SE 1.4 (JDK 1.4) (February 6, 2002): Introduced assert, non-blocking IO (nio), logging API, image IO, Java webstart, regular expression support.
  7. J2SE 5.0 (JDK 1.5) (September 30, 2004): Officially called 5.0 instead of 1.5. Introduced generics, autoboxing/unboxing, annotation, enum, varargs, for-each loop, static import.
  8. Java SE 6 (JDK 1.6) (December 11, 2006): Renamed J2SE to Java SE (Java Standard Edition).
  9. Java SE 7 (JDK 1.7) (July 28, 2011): First version after Oracle purchased Sun (called Oracle JDK).
  10. Java SE 8 (JDK 1.8) (March 18, 2014): included support for Lambda expressions, default and static methods in interfaces, improved collection, and JavaScript runtime. Also integrated JavaFX graphics subsystem.
  11. Java SE 9 (JDK 9) (September 21, 2017): introduced modularization of the JDK (module) under project Jigsaw, the Java Shell (jshell), and more.
  12. Java SE 10 (18.3) (JDK 10) (March, 2018): introduced var for type inference local variable (similar to JavaScript). There will be 2 releases each year, in March and September, denoted as yy.m.
  13. Java SE 11 (18.9 LTS) (JDK 11) (September, 2018): extended var to lambda expression. Standardize HTTP client in java.net.http. Support TLS 1.3. Clean up the JDK and the installation package.

Views: 632

Comment

You need to be a member of Codetown to add comments!

Join Codetown

Happy 10th year, JCertif!

Notes

Welcome to Codetown!

Codetown is a social network. It's got blogs, forums, groups, personal pages and more! You might think of Codetown as a funky camper van with lots of compartments for your stuff and a great multimedia system, too! Best of all, Codetown has room for all of your friends.

When you create a profile for yourself you get a personal page automatically. That's where you can be creative and do your own thing. People who want to get to know you will click on your name or picture and…
Continue

Created by Michael Levin Dec 18, 2008 at 6:56pm. Last updated by Michael Levin May 4, 2018.

Looking for Jobs or Staff?

Check out the Codetown Jobs group.

 

Enjoy the site? Support Codetown with your donation.



InfoQ Reading List

Yelp Achieves Zero-Downtime Upgrade of Over 1,000 Cassandra Nodes

Yelp has completed a large-scale upgrade of its Apache Cassandra infrastructure, spanning more than 1,000 nodes, without any service downtime, offering a blueprint for managing stateful systems at scale.

By Craig Risi

Presentation: Deepfakes, Disinformation, and AI Content Are Taking Over the Internet

Shuman Ghosemajumder explains how generative AI has transformed from a creative curiosity into a high-scale tool for disinformation and fraud. He shares insights on "Disinformation Automation," the fallacy of CAPTCHA in an AI world, and why engineering leaders must adopt zero-trust "cyber fusion" strategies to defend against automated attacks that mimic human behavior with chilling accuracy.

By Shuman Ghosemajumder

Article: Orchestrating Agentic and Multimodal AI Pipelines with Apache Camel

In this article, author Vignesh Durai discusses how agentic and multimodal AI systems can be engineered using Apache Camel and LangChain4j technologies. The key components in the solution include LLM-based reasoning, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), and image classification.

By Vignesh Durai

HashiCorp Vault 2.0 Marks Shift to IBM Lifecycle with New Identity Federation

HashiCorp has released Vault 2.0, moving to the IBM versioning and support model following its acquisition. The update introduces Workload Identity Federation for secret syncing without static credentials, SCIM 2.0 provisioning, and performance gains in the storage engine. It also prioritises identity-based security and certificate automation while removing legacy architectural components.

By Mark Silvester

React Navigation 8.0 Alpha with Native Bottom Tabs, Reworked TypeScript Inference and History

React Navigation has released version 8.0 in alpha, updating its routing library for React Native and web applications. Notable changes include native bottom tabs as the default, enhanced TypeScript inference, and deep linking enabled by default. The update prioritizes stability and includes a guide for migration from version 7.x.

By Daniel Curtis

© 2026   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service