General Introduction
Java is a programming language developed by James Gosling from Sun Microsystems(now owned by Oracle Corporation) in 1991. Sun Microsystems released the first publicy available version of Java as Java 1.0 in 1955. The main target of Java was to write a program once and then be able to run this program on multiple operating systems. Thus it is intended to let application developers “write once, run anywhere” (WORA). Java programs are platform independent and would run on all platforms supporting Java without the need of compilation.
Some facts:
Java is a general-purpose, concurrent, class-based and object oriented programming language.It is normally compiled to the bytecode instruction set and binary format defined in the Java Virtual Machine Specification. It is secure (enables to develop virus-free, tamper-free systems), simple (easy to learn), portable, robust and platform independent. The use of Just-In-Time compilers give it a high performance. Java is more dynamic than C/C++ as it is designed to adapt to an evolving environment.
History of Java (Why was it needed?)
James Gosling, Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, Mike Sheridan and Ed Frank initiated the Java language project in June 1991.It was originally designed for interactive telivision but unfortunately it was too advanced for digital cable telivision industries at that time. The idea was to develop a language which was platform-independent and which could create embedded software for consumer electronic devices. It was initially named as Oak which was renamed to Java from Java coffee in 1995 and took almost 18 months to develop. Originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems(which has since merged into Oracle Corporation) and released in 1995. JDK 1.0 released in(January 23, 1996). It was fairly secure, featured configurable security, and allowed network- and file-access restrictions
Versions of Java
Java Platforms:
- Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE)
- Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE)
- Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME)
- Java FX
For Java programming, you need to install a software program called Java SE Development Kit or IDE like Netbeans, Eclipse, Android Studio, BlueJ, DrJava, JSource,etc.
The extension for Java Source Code file is .java which after compilation a .class file is produced containing java bytecode excutable on JVM.
Uses of Java
Java has a great importance and use in the present world. According to Oracle, now it runs in more than 3 billion devices.
Java is widely used across different types of applications. It is used to develop various mobile, desktop, server and web applications. It is used in development of various Desktop GUI Applications as it provides GUI development through various means. It is one of the most popular frameworks to build mobile applications too. One of the most popular mobile OS Android was usually scripted in Java. Java is also used in development of eCommerce web applications using open-source eCommerce platforms, such as Broadleaf. It is also the first choice for developers writing applications involving scientific calculations and mathematical operations (like MATLAB). It is also used in web servers and application servers and web applications.
