Hello World(s) -- From Code to Culture

the long version

2005 marks the 10th birthday of Java technology. Starting out as just a programming language, Java technology has exploded into a ubiquitous technology platform that today touches the lives of people everywhere. This 10th birthday celebration book tells the story of how Java technology came to influence technologists, then businesses, then consumers, and now has become the predominate software on the planet. In the early 1990s, a small group of us from Sun Microsystems were given the opportunity to spend all of our time thinking of what "the next big thing in technology" would be. What we created was a hardware-independent software platform unlike any other. We thought it was pretty cool, and so did our developer friends. But at that time, I don't think that any of us really had any idea of what we had done, not to mention how it would change the world. I certainly know I didn't. Of course, it wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the Java developer community. Developers are the ones who made the technology a success over the years. Their ingenuity, creativity, and millions of hours of contributed help has made the platform what it is today. We're lucky to have millions of developers constantly driving it forward into the future. - James Gosling, "Father of Java."