| year = {{Start date and age|1995|5|23}}<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2015/05/20/javas-20-years-of-innovation/ | title=Java's 20 Years Of Innovation | publisher=Forbes | date=20 May 2015 | accessdate=18 March 2016 | author=Binstock, Andrew}}</ref>
| designer = [[James Gosling]]
| developer = [[Sun Microsystems]] (now acquired by [[Oracle Corporation]])
| influenced_by = [[Ada (programming language)|Ada 83]], [[C++]], [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]],<ref>Java 5.0 added several new language features (the [[foreach loop|enhanced for loop]], [[Object type (object-oriented programming)#Autoboxing|autoboxing]], [[variadic function|varargs]] and [[Java annotation|annotations]]), after they were introduced in the similar (and competing) [[C Sharp (programming language)|C#]] language [http://www.barrycornelius.com/papers/java5/] [http://www.levenez.com/lang/]</ref> [[Eiffel (programming language)|Eiffel]],<ref>{{cite web |author=Gosling, James; and McGilton, Henry |title=The Java Language Environment |date=May 1996 |url=http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/langenv-140151.html }}</ref> [[Generic Java]], [[Mesa (programming language)|Mesa]],<ref>{{cite web |author=Gosling, James; Joy, Bill; Steele, Guy; and Bracha, Gilad |title=The Java Language Specification, 2nd Edition |url= http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/second_edition/html/intro.doc.html#237601 }}</ref> [[Modula-3]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1422447371;pp;3;fp;4194304;fpid;1 |title=The A-Z of Programming Languages: Modula-3 |publisher=Computerworld.com.au |accessdate=2010-06-09 }}</ref> [[Oberon (programming language)|Oberon]],<ref>[[Niklaus Wirth]] stated on a number of public occasions, e.g. in a lecture at the Polytechnic Museum, Moscow in September, 2005 (several independent first-hand accounts in Russian exist, e.g. one with an audio recording: {{cite web |author=Filippova, Elena|title=Niklaus Wirth's lecture at the Polytechnic Museum in Moscow|date=September 22, 2005|url=http://www.delphikingdom.com/asp/viewitem.asp?catalogid=1155}}), that the Sun Java design team licensed the Oberon compiler sources a number of years prior to the release of Java and examined it: a (relative) compactness, type safety, garbage collection, no multiple inheritance for classes{{snd}} all these key overall design features are shared by Java and Oberon.</ref> [[Objective-C]],<ref>[[Patrick Naughton]] cites [[Objective-C]] as a strong influence on the design of the Java programming language, stating that notable direct derivatives include Java interfaces (derived from Objective-C's [[Objective-C#Protocols|protocol]]) and primitive wrapper classes. [http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/stuff/java-objc.html]</ref> [[UCSD Pascal]],<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.fscript.org/prof/javapassport.pdf |quote=The project went ahead under the name "green" and the language was based on an old model of [[UCSD Pascal]], which makes it possible to generate interpretive code |title=History of Java |work=Java Application Servers Report |author=TechMetrix Research |year=1999 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1017013 |title=A Conversation with James Gosling – ACM Queue |publisher=Queue.acm.org |date=2004-08-31 |accessdate=2010-06-09 }}</ref> [[Object Pascal]]<ref>In the summer of 1996, Sun was designing the precursor to what is now the event model of the AWT and the JavaBeans TM component architecture. Borland contributed greatly to this process. We looked very carefully at Delphi Object Pascal and built a working prototype of bound method references in order to understand their interaction with the Java programming language and its APIs.[https://web.archive.org/web/20120627043929/http://java.sun.com/docs/white/delegates.html White Paper About Microsoft's "Delegates"]</ref>