Wednesday, 14 March 2012

INTRODUCTION TO JAVA

Java
Java is an object-oriented language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s and released in 1995.  Java combined many of the best ideas from Pascal, C and various other object-oriented languages.

The principal design goals were to have a relatively simple and “safe” language.  At the time, C++ was (and probably still is) the dominant object-oriented language, and Java's creators deemed it too complex and error-prone for non-expert programmers.

Java was designed as a cross-platform language.  The same compiled code can (theoretically) run on any computer.  Java accomplishes this feat by running your program within a Java Virtual Machine (JVM).  The JVM is another program that simulates a computer that has Java bytecode as its instruction set.  The Java compiler translates your Java program into the bytecodes needed by the virtual machine.  So when you run a Java program it actually runs on a "computer" being simulated by your computer.  Today, Java Virtual Machines are available for most modern computers.

Java's initial popularity was because of its concept of applets. These are small downloadable programs that run within a web browser.  It was the cross-platform nature of Java that made this feasible.  While applets are still in use today,  Java's success is now more in general-purpose programming and server-side programming (i.e., programs running on a web server that generate dynamic web pages).  Java is one of the fastest-growing languages around today.

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