Java SE versions history
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Last Updated on 19 May 2013
From the first version released in 1996 to the latest version 7.0 announced in 2011, the Java platform has been actively being developed for about 15 years. Many changes and improvements have been made to the technology over the years. The following table summarizes all versions of Java SE from its early days to the latest.
|
Version Name |
Code Name |
Release Date |
|
JDK 1.0 |
Oak |
January 1996 |
|
JDK 1.1 |
(none) |
February 1997 |
|
J2SE 1.2 |
Playground |
December 1998 |
|
J2SE 1.3 |
Kestrel |
May 2000 |
|
J2SE 1.4 |
Merlin |
February 2002 |
|
J2SE 5.0 |
Tiger |
September 2004 |
|
Java SE 6 |
Mustang |
December 2006 |
|
Java SE 7 |
Dolphin |
July 2011 |
|
Java SE 8 |
(Not available) |
Delayed until March 2014 |
From the table above we can see that the naming and the version number have been changing over times:
- Versions 1.0 and 1.0 are named as JDK (Java Development Kit).
- From versions 1.2 to 1.4, the platform is named as J2SE (Java 2 Standard Edition).
- From versions 1.5, Sun introduces internal and external versions. Internal version is continuous from previous ones (1.5 after 1.4), but the external version has a big jump (5.0 for 1.5). This could make confusion for someone, so keep in mind that version 1.5 and version 5.0 are just two different version names for only one thing.
Major versions were released after every 2 years, however the Java SE 7 took 5 years to be available after its predecessor Java SE 6.
Reference: http://java.sun.com/j2se/codenames.html
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