Java is a programming language. It was first developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems, which is now a part of Oracle Corporation. It was released in 1995 as a part of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language has developed much of its syntax from C and C++. Java applications are usually compiled to bytecode (class file) that can run on any Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Java is currently one of the most popular programming languages being used. It has about 10 million users.