happy 28th birthday java - when did you start

Tomorrow is Java's 28th birthday. Happy birthday!

My first line of Java code was in 1999 (in school). When was yours?

The oldest java file I can find was last modified:  ‎Wednesday, ‎May ‎20, ‎1998, ‏‎9:56:20 AM
I had just gotten back from a trip with lots of slides I wanted to be able to view on my PC.  I bought a scanner to get the images onto the PC and wrote a slideshow program to allow arranging and viewing the images.  I am still using the program.

Fall of 1996, for a class in grad school that taught CGI programming in Perl as well as Java applets.

As an undergraduate in '98.  However I recall reading a Java book covering version 1.0 a bit earlier, must have been getting a bit C[++] sick!    
I distinctly recall a "Rupert" [Army Officer], having seen the book title, telling me all about how he had traveled around the country [ Java ] and built passenger bridges!  

I wrote my first program using Java (ignoring Hello World program) in 2018-19 during final year of my undergrad degree

I can't rightly tell. My employer at the time was several employers ago   and like most of the employers since then, the entire department was disposed of courtesy of Bean Counter Management, so I don't have any legacy code to reference, but I was definitely working with WebLogic by 1999 or earlier, as they liquidated THAT department no later than 2001.

Actually, I tried creating my own JVM using ANTLR back then, so I might be able to find something on my old Amiga disk images.

I moved back to New York City after living in Silicon Valley around 1990.    I was a dBase Clipper programmer and QA Tester.  I heard about Java and took a two weekend in a row class held downtown.    I remember working all week, then traveling to Manhattan from Queens for two weekends in a row. After the second weekend of Java, I still had to work 5 more days to get a free weekend.

I was so tired from work, class, travelling that I think I was partially daydreaming and it was very difficult to pay attention.  

I was used to Ciipper programming that had much less variable typing.   It had a few Object Oriented ideas in Clipper so I could relate it to Java.  

Java seemed very tedious when I was looking at it in the classroom.   Hello World seemed OK, but when we started creating classes, I didn't know what the teacher was explaining.   I used existing classes and objects in Clipper, but never saw what was inside of one.  I didn't catch on that we were making our own classes.  The concept was something I never expected to see.

The teacher was telling us that Java is the next thing that will be around for the rest of our careers if we wanted to stick with it.   After the class was over, I figured I'd never run into it again.  I was wrong.  Here I have having fun learning it for enjoyment.

Best,

Kevin