A Very Brief History of Java

The original purpose was to develop a language for digital devices such as televisions. It turned out that a major reason for its success was that it was suited for Internet programming Internet programming, and in particular Browsers, because:
  1. It was very portable - The Java Virtual Machine
     
  2. It was a member of the C family of languages. C an important part of the a programmer's education.
     
  3. With respect to C and C++ , there was not a major performance penalty.