The Java Story
The Java phenomenon took the programming world by storm in a way that nothing else before it had ever done. Part of this is explained by the fact that the sudden appearance of Java "applets" gave web programmers a way to put dynamic content on their web pages in a brand new and very exciting way.
This is yet another example of how important timing can be in the development of a new technology. The web was just taking off as Java came along. Or, more correctly, the folks at Sun realized that Java would be an excellent candidate for programming applications for this new "world wide web" phenomenon they saw developing, and released the Java language to the world at large. So, to a large extent, the two phenomena developed side by side.