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: 636

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

Presentation: The Human Toll of Incidents & Ways To Mitigate It

Kyle Lexmond explains how to handle the high-pressure environment of severe production outages. He discusses the critical distinction between mitigation and root-cause resolution, sharing personal experiences from harrowing incident rooms. He shares valuable operational strategies on overcoming cognitive overload, establishing blameless cultures, and optimizing systems for faster recovery.

By Kyle Lexmond

OpenTelemetry Launches “Blueprints” Initiative to Simplify Enterprise Observability Adoption

OpenTelemetry has introduced a new "Blueprints" initiative aimed at reducing the growing complexity of deploying and operating observability systems at scale.

By Craig Risi

Article: Why Vector Search Alone Isn't Enough: Hybrid Retrieval for RAG

In this article, author Aaditya Chauhan discusses the limitations of RAG pipelines based purely on vector search and how an internal omni-search application using Reciprocal Rank Fusion (RRF) that combines BM25 and vector results, can enhance the search solution.

By Aaditya Chauhan

Google Workspace CLI: Unified Command-Line Tool Built for Humans and AI Agents

Google has released a new CLI for Google Workspace, offering a unified interface for various services like Drive, Gmail, and Calendar. Built in Rust, the tool dynamically adjusts to API changes and features over 100 bundled skills. It requires Node.js and a Google Cloud project for setup. Initial community feedback is mixed, highlighting both its dynamic capabilities and setup challenges.

By Daniel Curtis

Java News Roundup: OpenJDK JEPs, Hazelcast, Quarkus, Hibernate, Koog, JHipster, Introducing Endive

This week's Java roundup for May 25th, 2026, features news highlighting: lifecycle changes with two of the JEPs that were targeted for JDK 27; the GA release of Koog 1.0; point releases of Hazelcast, Quarkus, Hibernate and JHipster; the eighth milestone release of Spring AI 2.0; and introducing Endive, a JVM-native WebAssembly (Wasm) runtime.

By Michael Redlich

© 2026   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service