Since 2010 Java belongs to the Oracle Corporation as part of the acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The original compiler was written in C and shortly after the language was renamed to Java and the focus shifted to the World Wide Web. The first prototype was called Oak (Object Application Kernel) and it was targeted towards interactive television and other entertainment devices. Java was originally invented by James Gosling in the early 1990s during his time at Sun Microsystems because he was not satisfied with the capabilities of C++. Applications written in Java can run on almost any device and computer architecture if a corresponding runtime environment is installed. This virtualization enables platform-independence, a big feature of Java.
This means that the code isn't directly run by the hardware but by software on the target platform. The machines running the bytecode are typically virtual machines. This source code cannot be run directly and needs to be compiled by the Java Compiler, which is part of the JDK, into bytecode that computers can understand. Java applications are written in a form that humans can understand, the so-called source code. It is important to know that the JRE can not only run bytecode compiled from Java but also from other programming languages like Scala, Groovy, or Kotlin (and theoretically from any other languages if a bytecode compiler exists for them). The runtime itself consists of several libraries and the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Together with the Java Development Kit (JDK) and the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) it forms the Java Technolgy. Java in this context is a class-based, object-oriented programming language and one of the most popular languages in the world. But before we take care of the differences between the programming languages Javascript and Java, let us find out what these two terms mean and what the languages are used for. Therefore, it is time to bring clarity to this matter once and for all. The two terms Java and JavaScript are often used as synonyms, being mistaken or simply thought of as the evolution of the other language, which is completely wrong. Even today many people are asking the question "What is the difference between Java and Javascript".