Java – 01 – Introduction

Java is a high level object oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. The language itself is very similar to C++, but has been made simpler to make it easier to write bug free code. Most notably there are no pointers in Java, instead all memory allocation and deallocation is handled automatically. Despite simplifications like this Java has considerably more functionality than both C and C++, because of its large class library. Java programs also have high performance and can be made very secure, which has contributed to making it the most popular general purpose programming language in use today. Another key feature of Java is that it’s platform independent. This is achieved by only compiling programs half-way, into platform independent instructions called bytecode. The bytecode is then interpreted or run by the Java Virtual Machine. This means that any system that has this program and its accompanying libraries installed can run Java applications.

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