The earliest version of Java I worked with in production was 1.5, but the group I was working with had been using it in production a long time before that.  There were other groups using Java for a lot of other things (JDBC, JMS, etc...).  All the stuff I worked with relied on core Java and NIO though, which I&#x27;m not entirely sure how a lot of things were done before 1.5.<p>Java is definitely still really popular for development overall (TIOBE 2015 #1).  My personal concern with Oracle vs. Google though is that Oracle does not own the <i>language</i>, and the copyright claim on APIs seems pretty aggressive.  The JVM and Java have open specifications which in theory anyone should be allowed to implement (practice is admittedly a bit different).  Even the official JDK was open source, which Oracle seems a bit hostile toward considering what they&#x27;ve done with purchases like MySQL and how the community largely responded.<p>Claiming copyright on an API seems somewhat akin to Keurig 2.0.  Although, I think courts are having trouble keeping pace with technology.