UNIVERSIDAD AUTÓNOMA DE BUCARAMANGA-MINTIC

LANGUAGE DEPARTMENT

BASICS OF JAVA

INTRODUCTION TO THE JAVA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

Introduction to Java Programming Language

Java is a general-purpose, object-oriented programming language designed for the development of software
for consumer electronic devices, such as TVs, VCRs, toasters, etc.

Java is a platform neutral language, which means that it is not tied to any particular hardware or operating
system. It guarantees users to ‘write once, run anywhere.' The Java language is supported by almost every
operating system, such as Sun Solaris, RedHat, Windows, etc.

The Java programming language was developed by Sun Microsystems of the USA in 1991, it was originally called
Oak by James Gosling, who was one of the inventors of the language. The main goal for the developers was to
make the language highly reliable, portable and simple.

The team for the development of Java language included Patrick Naughton, who discovered that the existing
languages such as C and C++ had some major drawbacks in terms of reliability and portability. They modeled
the new language Java on C and C++, while removing some features that they considered constraints. This made
Java a really simple, portable, and powerful language. To learn Java basics, let’s revise the Java syntax.

The History of Java

There is a chronicle of events that occurred during the course of development of the Java language.

1990: A team of Sun Microsystems programmers decided to develop a special software to manipulate consumer
electronic devices. The team headed by James Gosling.
1991: The team studied various languages present at that time, viz., C, and C++, and announced the new
language to be “Oak.”
1992: The team at Sun, known as the Green Project, demonstrated the application of their new language, for
example, to control a list of home appliances using a hand device with the tiny touchscreen.

1993: The World Wide Web came to the Internet and transformed the text-based Internet into a graphical, rich
environment. The Green Project team came up with an idea of developing Web applets (tiny programs) that
could run on all types of computers connected to the Internet.

1994: The team developed a web browser called “HotJava” to locate and run applet programs on the Internet.
This made it immensely popular amongst Internet users.

1995: Oak was renamed as “Java,” due to some legal snags. Java is the name and not an acronym.

1996: Java programming was established as the leader for Internet programming and also as a general-purpose,
object-oriented programming language. Sun released the Java Development Kit 1.0.
1997: Sun releases the Java Development Kit 1.1 (JDK 1.1)

1998: Sun releases Java 2 with version 1.2 of the Software Development Kit (SD K 1.2)
1999: Sun releases the Java 2 platform, Standard Edition (J2SE), and Enterprise Edition (J2EE)

2000: Sun releases J2SE with SDK 1.3.

2002: Sun releases J2SE with SDK 1.4.

2004: This marked the release of J2SE with JDK 5.0 (instead of JDK 1.5), known as J2SE 5.0.
2006- Sun releases Java SE 6.

2011: Sun releases Java SE 7.

2014: Sun releases Java SE 8.
2017: Sun releases Java SE 9.

Features of Java Programming

The main goal was to design a language that could offer solutions to problems encountered in modern
programming. The goal was for the language to be reliable, portable, and distributed, and at the same time, it
needed to be simple, compact, and interactive.

Compiled and Interpreted

Java language combines both of these approaches, thus making Java a two-stage system. This approach was
never offered before, as any language before was either compiled or interpreted.

Firstly, the Java compiler translates source code into bytecode instructions; bytecodes are not machine
instructions.

Secondly, the Java interpreter generates machine code that can be directly executed by the machine that is
running the Java program.

Independent and Portable

Java programs can be easily moved from one system to another, anywhere and anytime. With changes or an
upgrade in the operating system, processors and system resources will not force any changes in Java programs.

Java programming ensures portability in two ways. Firstly, Java compiler generates bytecode instructions that
can be implemented on any machine, and secondly, the size of the primitive data types are machine
independent.

Object-Oriented
Almost everything in Java language is an object, which makes it a true object-oriented language. All program
code and data reside within objects and classes. Java comes with an extensive set of classes that are arranged
in packages, which can be used in program inheritance.
Robust and Secure
Java provides many safeguards to ensure reliable code. It has strict run-time, checking for data types. It is
designed like a garbage collected language, i.e., it captures series errors and eliminates any risk of crashing the
system.

Java systems verify all the memory access and, thus, ensure that no virus is communicated with an applet.

Distributed
Java programming facilitates both the sharing of data and programs. Java applications can open and access
remote objects on the Internet as easily as on any local system.

Simple, Small, and Familiar

Java is a simplified version of C++, which is why it is familiar and yet different as it eliminates all the redundant
and unreliable code. For example, Java does not use pointers, preprocessor header files, and many others. It
also eliminates operator overloading and multiple inheritances in Java.

Multithreaded and Interactive

Multithreaded means handling different tasks simultaneously. Java language supports multithreaded
programs, which means that we need not have to wait for one task to finish for another to start. This feature of
Java greatly improves the interactive performance of graphical applications.

High Performance
Java programming performance is very impressive, considering the fact that is an interpreted language, mainly
because of the bytecodes. Java architecture is designed to reduce overheads.

Dynamic and Extensible

Java is a dynamic language; it is capable of dynamically linking in new class libraries, methods, and objects. It
can also determine the type of class through a query.

Ease of Development
Java 2 standard edition (J2SE) 5.0 supports features such as Generics, Enhanced for loop, Autoboxing or
unboxing, Type-safe enums, varargs, Static import, and Annotation. These Java features make it easy for Java
programmers by shifting the responsibility of creating the reusable code to the compiler, and also, the resulting
code is free from bugs.

Scalability and Performance

J2SE 5.0 improves the startup time and reduces the amount of memory used in the Java 2 runtime
environment.
 COMPARISON: C VS. JAVA VS. C++

The differences between these three programming languages are:

C Vs. Java
The major difference between C and Java is that Java is an object-oriented language and has a mechanism to
define classes and objects.

taken from: https://www.tutorialspoint.com/difference-between-java-and-c-language

Java Vs. C++
The main difference between C++ and Java is that Java is a true object-oriented language while C++ just adds an
object-oriented extension to C. The increment operator in C++ indicates the same thing.

taken from: https://ipwithease.com/c-vs-java/