Introduction to Java

What is Java?

Java is a high-level, object-oriented, platform-independent programming language. It was developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems in 1995. Java is a fast, secure, and reliable language used for many games, devices, and applications.

More than 3 billion devices run Java today. It is used for developing mobile applications, desktop applications, web applications, games, database connection, and much more.

Java Features

The primary objective of Java programming language creation was to make it portable and platform-independent. Java has the following features:

• Simple: Java is easy to learn. It is designed to be easy to use and learn. Java has removed many complicated features such as pointers, operator overloading, multiple inheritances, etc.

• Object-Oriented: Java is an object-oriented programming language. It follows the OOPs concepts such as inheritance, encapsulation, polymorphism, abstraction, etc.

• Platform-Independent: Java is platform-independent. It is not specific to any processor or operating system. It can run on any machine with any operating system.

• Secure: Java is a secure programming language. It enables the development of virus-free, tamper-free systems. It does not support pointers, which avoids security problems.

• Robust: Java is a robust programming language. It is designed to eliminate the possibility of error-prone situations by emphasizing mainly on compile-time error checking and runtime checking.

• Multithreaded: Java supports multithreading. It allows you to write programs that can perform many tasks simultaneously. It helps in the execution of two or more parts of a program at the same time.

• Portable: Java is portable. It can be carried to any platform or operating system. Java provides the concept of bytecode due to which it is portable.

• High Performance: Java is faster than other traditional interpreted programming languages because Java bytecode is "close" to native code. It is still a little bit slower than a compiled language (such as C++). However, Java enables high performance with the use of just-in-time compilers.

• Distributed: Java is distributed. It is designed to support the construction of applications on networks. It helps to share data and programs.

• Dynamic: Java is a dynamic programming language. It supports dynamic memory allocation. Java programs can carry an extensive amount of run-time information that can be used to verify and resolve accesses to objects on run-time.