Java is a very popular programming language that was created in 1991 from Sun Microsystems by James Gosling. Java programming language is widely used among programmers in carrying out programming languages. The first available version of Java was released in 1995. Sun Microsystem was acquired by Oracle Corporation in 2010. Java is now owned by Oracle and more than 3 billion devices run Java. Over time, new enhanced versions of Java have been released. The current version of Java is Java 1.8 which is also known as Java 8.
Java by specification consists of a programming language, a compiler, core libraries and a runtime (Java virtual machine). The Java runtime allows software developers to write program code in other languages than the Java programming language which till run on the Java virtual machine.
Java language was designed with the following properties
- Platform Independent: Java programs use the Java virtual machine and do not access the operating system directly which makes the Java programs highly portable. A Java program can run unmodified can run on all supported platforms such as Linux or windows.
- Automatic memory management: Java manages the memory allocation and DE-allocation for creating new objects.
- Interpreted and compiled language: Java source code is transferred into the byte-code format which does not depend on the target platform. These byte-code will be interpreted by the Java virtual machine (JVM) which will be translated into native code instructions.
- Object-oriented programing language: Except the primitive data type, all elements in Java are objects.
- Strongly-typed programming language: Java is strongly-typed, that is, the type of variables used must be pre-defined and conversion to other objects is very strict because it must be done in most cases by programmers.
USES OF JAVA
- It is used in games
- Web servers and application servers make use of Java
- Java is used in web applications
- We use Java in mobile applications (Android apps)
- Java is used in desktop applications
WHY DO PEOPLE USE JAVA
- Java is mostly used by people because it is one of the most popular programming language
- Java is closed to C++ and C# which makes it easy for programmers to switch to Java.
- Java is an object oriented language which gives a clear structure to programs and allows code to be used.
- Java is easy to learn and simple to use.
- Java is secure, fast and powerful.
- It has a very large communication support ( tens of millions of developers)
- Java works on different platforms (Mac, Linux, Window, etc)
