Java

Java is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language created by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and first released in 1995. Oracle acquired Sun in 2010 and now stewards the language and the reference JDK implementation. Java's design centers on the write-once-run-anywhere principle: source code compiles to bytecode that runs on any Java Virtual Machine, regardless of the underlying hardware or operating system.

The current long-term support release is Java 25, shipped in September 2025. Recent JDK versions have modernized the language considerably — records provide concise immutable data carriers, sealed classes restrict inheritance hierarchies, and virtual threads (introduced in Java 21) enable lightweight concurrency without the overhead of platform threads. The OpenJDK project maintains the open-source reference implementation.

Oracle publishes the official Java SE documentation. The OpenJDK source code is available on GitHub, and the JDK Enhancement Proposals track planned language and runtime changes.