What is Java?

Java is a programmig language and a platform. Java is a high level, robust, object-oriented and secure programming laguage.

Java was developed by Sun Microsystems(which is now the subsidiary of Oracle) in the year 1995, by James Gosling

Platform: Any hardware or software environment in which a program runs, is known as aplatform. Since, Java has a runtime environment (JRE) and API, it is called Platform.

Features of Java

1. Simple:

   Java is very easy to learn, and its syntax is simple, clean and easy to understand. According to Sun Microsystem, Java language is simple programming language because:

   •Java syntax is based on C++(so easier for programmers to learn it after C++).

   •Java has removed many complicated and rarely-used features, for example: explicit pointers, operator overloading etc.

   •There is no need to remove Unreffered objects because there is an Automatic Garbage Collection in java.

2. Object-oriented:

   Java is object-oriented programming language. Everything in Java is an object. Object-oriented means we organized our software as a cobination of different types of objects that incorporate both data and behaviour.

3. Platform Independents:

   Java is platform independent because it is different from other languages like C, C++, etc. which are compiled into platform specific machines while Java is a 'write once, run anywhere' language. A platform is the hardware or software environment in which a program run.

4. Secured:

   Java is best known for it's security. With java, we can develop virus-free systems. Java is secures because:

   • No explicit pointer

   • Java Programs run inside a virtual machine sandbox.

5. Robust:

   The English meaning of Robust is strong. Java is robust because:

   • It uses strong memory management.

   • There is a lack of pointers that avoids security problems.

   • Java provides automatic garbage collection which runs on the Java Virtual Machine to get rid of object which are not being used by a java application anymore.

6. Architecture-natural:

   Java is architecture natural because there are no implementation dependent features, for example, the size of primitive types is fixed.

7. Portable:

   Java is portable because it facilitates you to carry the Java bytecode to any platform. It doesn't require any implementation.

8. High-performance:

   Java is faster than other traditional interpreted programming languages because Java bytecode is "close" to native code.

9. Distributed:

   Java is distributed because it facilitates users to create distributed applications in Java.

10. Multi-threaded:

    A thread is like a separate program, executing concurrently. We can write Java programs that deal with many tasks at once by defining multiple threads.

11. Dynamic:

    Java is a dynamic language. It supports the dynamic loading of classes. It means classes are loaded on demand. It also supports functions from its native languages, i.e., C and C++.