Java first appeared in 1995 as Oak. This was a reference to the Oak tree that stood afar Gosling’s office. Before it could find its popularity as Java (finding its roots in coffee, which in turn is attributed to Java- an island in Indonesia), they also decided to call the project Green. Version 1.0 rolled out in 1996 when Sun Microsystems promised the principle of WORA (Write Once, Run Anywhere). Then came along Java 2 (J2SE 1.2) in December 1998-1999. J2EE was for enterprise applications. Then in 2006, boosting its marketing capabilities, Sun renamed new J2 versions as Java EE, Java ME, and Java SE.

By March of 2018, Java SE 10 got to see the light of day.