Java evolved out of a Sun research project started six years ago to look into distributed control of consumer electronics devices. At that time, the priori ties of the consumer electronics industry were quite different from those in the computer industry. Whereas five years ago the computer industry's mantra was compatibility, the consumer electronics industry considered security, networking, portability, and cost to be far more important. The buzzwords that have been applied to Java-distributed computing, architecture neutrality, and so on-derive directly from this context. The article provides a first-hand account of some of the design decisions underlying Java and the rationale behind them.