Java is a programming language and computing platform first released in 1995 by Sun Microsystems that runs on many devices from laptops to servers and is used widely on the internet. It has had many versions released starting with JDK 1.0 in 1996 up to the most recent Java SE 8 in 2014. A simple "Hello World" Java program displays that text by printing to the system output, and Java projects are compiled by saving files to the Java directory and using commands in the command line interface.