Introduction of JAVA

Java is a programming language developed by James Gosling from Sun Microsystems in 1991. The first public version of Java (Java 1.0) was released 1995. Over time several various version of Java were available which improved and enhanced the language and it libraries as well as classes.
From the Java programming language the Java platform evolved. The Java platform allows that Code is written in other languages then the Java programming language and still runs on the Java virtual machine.

Characteristics of Java

Java has the following properties

• Platform independentJava program do in general not access directly system resources but use the Java virtual machine as abstraction. This makes Java programs highly portable. A Java program which is standard complaint and follows certain rules can run unmodified all several platforms, e.g. Windows or Linux.
• Object-orientated programming languageExcept the primitive data types, all elements in Java are objects
• Strongly-typed programming language Java is strongly-typed, e.g. types of the elements must be pre-defined and conversion to other objects is relatively restricted.
• Interpreted and compiled language Java source code is transfered into byte-code which does not depend on the target platform. This byte-code will be interpreted by the Java Virtual machine (JVM). The JVM contains a so called Hotspot-Compiler which translates critical byte-code into native code.
• Automatic memory managementJava manages the memory allocation and de-allocation for creating new objects. The program does not have direct access to the memory. The so-called garbage collector deletes automatically object to which no active pointer exists.
• Java is case sensitiveThe Java syntax is similar to C++. Java is case sensitive, e.g. the variables myValue and myvalue will be treated as different variables.