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: 625

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: How to Build a Database Without a Server

Alex Seaton discusses the architecture of ArcticDB, a high-performance Python/C++ library that replaces traditional database servers with a thick-client model. He explains how to achieve atomicity on object storage through bottom-up writes and shares deep insights into conflict-free replicated data types (CRDTs). He also explores the pitfalls of clock drift and distributed locking.

By Alex Seaton

Meta Applies Mutation Testing with LLM to Improve Compliance Coverage

Meta applies large language models to mutation testing through its Automated Compliance Hardening system, generating targeted mutants and tests to improve compliance coverage, reduce overhead, and detect privacy and safety risks. The approach supports scalable, LLM-driven test generation and continuous compliance across Meta’s platforms.

By Leela Kumili

DeepSeek-V3.2 Outperforms GPT-5 on Reasoning Tasks

DeepSeek released DeepSeek-V3.2, a family of open-source reasoning and agentic AI models. The high compute version, DeepSeek-V3.2-Speciale, performs better than GPT-5 and comparably to Gemini-3.0-Pro on several reasoning benchmarks.

By Anthony Alford

Slack Enhances Chef Infrastructure to Improve Safety and Reduce Blast Radius in Deployments

Slack's engineering team has published an in-depth look at recent improvements to its Chef-based configuration management system, aimed at making deployments safer and more resilient without disrupting existing workflows.

By Craig Risi

Podcast: 2025 Key Trends: AI Workflows, Architectural Complexity, Sociotechnical Systems & Platform Products

In this end-of-year panel, the InfoQ podcast hosts reflect on AI’s impact on software delivery, the growing importance of sociotechnical systems, evolving cloud realities, and what 2026 may bring.

By Daniel Bryant, Renato Losio, Srini Penchikala, Thomas Betts, Shane Hastie

© 2026   Created by Michael Levin.   Powered by

Badges  |  Report an Issue  |  Terms of Service