What is Java

Java is a programming language and a platform.

Java is a high level, robust, secured and object-oriented programming language.

Platform: Any hardware or software environment in which a program runs, is

known as a platform. Since Java has its own runtime environment (JRE) and API, it
is called platform.

Java Example
Let's have a quick look at java programming example. A detailed description of
hello Java example is given in next page.

1. class Simple{  
2.     public static void main(String args[]){  
3.      System.out.println("Hello Java");  
4.     }  
5. }  

Where it is used
According to Sun, 3 billion devices run java. There are many devices where Java is
currently used. Some of them are as follows:

1. Desktop Applications such as acrobat reader, media player, antivirus etc.

2. Web Applications such as irctc.co.in, javatpoint.com etc.
3. Enterprise Applications such as banking applications.
4. Mobile
5. Embedded System
6. Smart Card
7. Robotics
8. Games etc.

Types of Java Applications

There are mainly 4 types of applications that can be created using java
programming:
1) Standalone Application

Standalone applications are also known as desktop applications or window-based

applications. These are traditional software that we need to install on every
machine. Example of standalone applications are: Media player, antivirus etc. AWT
and Swing are used in java for creating standalone applications.

2) Web Application

An application that runs on the server side and creates dynamic page, is called web
application. Currently, servlet, jsp, struts, spring, hibernate, jsf etc. technologies
are used for creating web applications in java.

3) Enterprise Application

An application that is distributed in nature, such as banking applications etc. is

called enterprise application. It has the advantage of high level security, load
balancing and clustering. In java, EJB is used for creating enterprise applications.

4) Mobile Application

An application that is created for mobile devices. Currently Android and Java ME are
used for creating mobile applications.

Java Platforms / Editions

There are 4 platforms or editions of Java:

1) Java SE (Java Standard Edition)

It is a java programming platform. It includes Java programming APIs such as

java.lang, java.io, java.net, java.util, java.sql, java.math etc. It includes core topics
like OOPs, String, Regex, Exception, Inner classes, Multithreading, I/O Stream,
Networking, AWT, Swing, Reflection, Collection etc.

2) Java EE (Java Enterprise Edition)

It is an enterprise platform which is mainly used to develop web and enterprise

applications. It is built on the top of Java SE platform. It includes topics like Servlet,
JSP, Web Services, EJB, JPA etc.
3) Java ME (Java Micro Edition)

It is a micro platform which is mainly used to develop mobile applications.

4) JavaFx

It is used to develop rich internet applications. It uses light-weight user interface

API.

History of Java
1. Brief history of Java
2. Java Version History

The history of Java is very interesting. Java was originally designed for interactive
television, but it was too advanced technology for the digital cable television
industry at the time. The history of java starts from Green Team. Java team
members (also known as Green Team), initiated this project to develop a language
for digital devices such as set-top boxes, televisions etc. But, it was suited for
internet programming. Later, Java technology was incorporated by Netscape.

James Gosling

Currently, Java is used in internet programming, mobile devices, games, e-business

solutions etc. There are given the major points that describes the history of java.

1) James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, and Patrick Naughton initiated the Java

language project in June 1991. The small team of sun engineers called Green
Team.

2) Originally designed for small, embedded systems in electronic appliances like

set-top boxes.

3) Firstly, it was called "Greentalk" by James Gosling and file extension was .gt.

4) After that, it was called Oak and was developed as a part of the Green project.
Why Java named as "Oak"

5) Why Oak? Oak is a symbol of strength and choosen as a national tree of many

countries like U.S.A., France, Germany, Romania etc.

6) In 1995, Oak was renamed as "Java" because it was already a trademark by

Oak Technologies.

Why Java named as "Java"

7) Why had they choosen java name for java language? The team gathered to
choose a new name. The suggested words were "dynamic", "revolutionary", "Silk",
"jolt", "DNA" etc. They wanted something that reflected the essence of the
technology: revolutionary, dynamic, lively, cool, unique, and easy to spell and fun
to say.

According to James Gosling "Java was one of the top choices along with Silk". Since
java was so unique, most of the team members preferred java.

8) Java is an island of Indonesia where first coffee was produced (called java
coffee).

9) Notice that Java is just a name not an acronym.

10) Originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems (which is now a

subsidiary of Oracle Corporation) and released in 1995.

11) In 1995, Time magazine called Java one of the Ten Best Products of 1995.

12) JDK 1.0 released in(January 23, 1996).

Java Version History
There are many java versions that has been released. Current stable release of
Java is Java SE 9.

1. JDK Alpha and Beta (1995)

2. JDK 1.0 (23rd Jan, 1996)
3. JDK 1.1 (19th Feb, 1997)
4. J2SE 1.2 (8th Dec, 1998)
5. J2SE 1.3 (8th May, 2000)
6. J2SE 1.4 (6th Feb, 2002)
7. J2SE 5.0 (30th Sep, 2004)
8. Java SE 6 (11th Dec, 2006)
9. Java SE 7 (28th July, 2011)
10. Java SE 8 (18th March, 2014)
11. Java SE 9 (21st Sep, 2017)

Features of Java
The main objective of Java programming language creation was to make it
portable, simple and secure programming language. Apart from this, there are also
some awesome features which play important role in the polularity of this language.
The features of Java are also known as java buzzwords. Following is a list of most
important features of Java language. The Java Features given below are simple and
easy to understand.
 1. Simple
2. Object-Oriented
3. Portable
4. Platform independent
5. Secured
6. Robust
7. Architecture neutral
8. Dynamic
9. Interpreted
10. High Performance
11. Multithreaded
12. Distributed

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

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

      removed many confusing and/or rarely-used features e.g., explicit pointers,

operator overloading etc.

      No need to remove unreferenced objects because there is Automatic Garbage

Collection in java.

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

Object-oriented programming(OOPs) is a methodology that simplifies software

development and maintenance by providing some rules.

Basic concepts of OOPs are:

1.Object
2.Class
3.Inheritance
4.Polymorphism
5.Abstraction
6.Encapsulation
Platform Independent

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 runs.

There are two types of platforms software-based and hardware-based. Java

provides software-based platform.

The Java platform differs from most other platforms in the sense that it is a
software-based platform that runs on the top of other hardware-based platforms. It
has two components:

1. Runtime Environment
2. API(Application Programming Interface)
Java code can be run on multiple platforms e.g. Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris,
Mac/OS etc. Java code is compiled by the compiler and converted into bytecode.
This bytecode is a platform-independent code because it can be run on multiple
platforms i.e. Write Once and Run Anywhere(WORA).

Secured

Java is best known for its security. With Java, we can develop virus-free systems.
Java is secured because:

o No explicit pointer
o Java Programs run inside virtual machine sandbox

o Classloader: Classloader in Java is a part of the Java Runtime

Environment(JRE) which is used to dynamically load Java classes into the
Java Virtual Machine. It adds security by separating the package for the
classes of the local file system from those that are imported from network
sources.
o Bytecode Verifier: It checks the code fragments for illegal code that can
violate access right to objects.
o Security Manager: It determines what resources a class can access such as
reading and writing to the local disk.

These security are provided by java language. Some security can also be provided
by application developer through SSL, JAAS, Cryptography etc.
Robust

Robust simply means strong. Java is robust because:

o It uses strong memory management.

o There are lack of pointers that avoids security problem.
o There is automatic garbage collection in java.
o There is exception handling and type checking mechanism in java. All these
points makes java robust.

Architecture-neutral

Java is architecture neutral because there is no implementation dependent features

e.g. size of primitive types is fixed.

In C programming, int data type occupies 2 bytes of memory for 32-bit architecture
and 4 bytes of memory for 64-bit architecture. But in java, it occupies 4 bytes of
memory for both 32 and 64 bit architectures.

Portable

Java is portable because it facilitates you to carry the java bytecode to any
platform.

High-performance
Java is faster than traditional interpretation since bytecode is "close" to native code
still somewhat slower than a compiled language (e.g., C++). Java is an interpreted
language, so it is also a reason that why it is slower than compiled language C, C+
+.

Distributed
Java is distributed because it facilitates us to create distributed applications in java.
RMI and EJB are used for creating distributed applications. We may access files by
calling the methods from any machine on the internet.
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. The main
advantage of multi-threading is that it doesn't occupy memory for each thread. It
shares a common memory area. Threads are important for multi-media, Web
applications etc.