Java history

First Release

Period: Jan 1, 1995 to Dec 31, 1995

First Release of Java

JDK 1.0

Period: Jan 1, 1996 to Dec 31, 1996

JDK 1.1

Period: Jan 1, 1997 to Dec 31, 1997

Inner classes
JavaBeans
JDBC RMI
Reflection

J2SE 1.2

Period: Jan 1, 1998 to Dec 31, 1998

Swing graphical API
JIT compiler
Java Plug-in
Collections
network

J2SE 1.3

Period: Jan 1, 2000 to Dec 31, 2000

HotSpot JVM
JNDI Interface
Java Sound API
Debugging Architecture

J2SE 1.4

Period: Jan 1, 2002 to Dec 30, 2002

Regular expressions
IPv6 network communications
Logging API XML XSLT
Security and cryptography
Java Web Start

J2SE 5.0 (1.5)

Period: Jan 1, 2004 to Dec 31, 2004

Generics
Metadata
Enummerations
Variable arguments
For-each enhancement

J2SE 6

Period: Jan 1, 2006 to Dec 31, 2006

Performance
JDBC 4.0
GUI improvements

Oracle buys Sun

Period: Jan 1, 2010 to Dec 30, 2010

J2SE 7

Period: Jan 1, 2011 to Dec 31, 2011

Strings in switch
try-catch improvements
Simplified variable arguments
Underscores in numeric literals

J2SE 8

Period: Jan 1, 2013 to Dec 31, 2013

Everything that was deffered from J2SE 7
Lambda expression