java collections framework history

Question

After searching on the web I didn't found a well-done article on the JCF and what there was prior of the framework.

Does anyone know a book, site or itself a good history paper on the question title?

Answer 1

An introduction to the basic features of the Java Collection Framework may be found here: http://download.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/collections/index.html. However, learning how to use the more complicated features of the JCF requires examining the children of the basic abstract classes and interfaces and reading the documentation for each one of them.

Answer 2

From Josh Bloch's introduction to the (his?) collection framework:

Collection implementations in earlier (pre-1.2) versions of the Java platform included Vector, Hashtable, and array. However, those earlier versions did not contain a collections framework.

So before Java 1.2 we already had utility classes for common data structures (Vector, Hashtable) but those classes didn't share the common interfaces (java.util.Collection, java.util.List, ...) that are the basis of the collection framework.