Java was created in 1991 by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems to develop technology for smart appliances. It was designed with principles of being portable, high-performance, robust and secure. After initial work under the name Oak, it was renamed Java and released in 1995 with a web browser called HotJava. Java was well received by developers for its "write once, run anywhere" capabilities allowing software to run on any system. Its strengths include automatic garbage collection, static and verbose code making it easy to read and maintain, and portability across platforms.