Java Programming Language Java is a programming language, which belongs to a group of object-oriented programming (OOP) languages, together with Objective C, C++, C#, etc. Java is a high-level language. It combines the best features of such languages, like Modula-3, C++ and Lisp; its initial main purpose was to become an alternative for C++ for programming embedded systems, as C++ frequently seemed to be very complicated for this. Java programming language has been developed at the beginning of 90s by James Gosling, Bill Joy, and Guy Steele, specialists of Sun Microsystems, who aimed to improve features of C++. The first name, which a newly created language received, was Oak, as beautiful oaks could be observed from the office windows. Later, in 1994, the language gained its final shape and a new name, Java, which used to be name of Sun program engineers favorite coffee shop, but some specialists say that Java can be an acronym of the names of its final creators (James Gosling, Arthur Van Hoff and Andy Bechtolsheim).
The first public release of Java took place in May, 1995, and the software received a great popularity among the programmers around the world. Especially it proved to be convenient for creating web-sites and different applications.
Soon a newly released web-browser, Netscape, included Java support. In 1996 a special Java Soft Business Group of software engineers was created at Sun Microsystems to continue developing Java technology. The main features of Java are mostly connected with its being object oriented. The main idea of OOP is grouping some types of data in so called classes, and to carry out further operations with such groups-classes. These classes in Java programming can be characterized by their code (behavior) and data (state), and also such a feature, like inheritance. Java offers the Remote Method Invocation, which allows managing with classes from any PC in network.
The scheme of working with classes considerably eases and comforts the work of programmers, besides it also decreases probability of errors. One more important characteristic of Java is independence of platform, so any software, written in Java, can run successfully at any hardware and in any environment. Technically it can be achieved by compiling Java codes into byte code with further translation into the specific codes of particular hardware. In addition to above mentioned, Java also offers some optimized decisions as to memory management (named garbage collection) and program interface, which were among the most claimed disadvantages of the earlier languages, like C++. The most valuable advantage of Java is its portability: its applications can run in the majority of operating systems and workstations. Object oriented concept makes Java effective, reliable and universal language for professional programmers and web designers. One more important plus is wide and various applicability of Java: software written in this language can be installed and operated at desktop computers, palm computers, mobile phones, web servers and web browsers, etc. Simplicity, security, dynamic and high performance of Java can be named amongst its other benefits. Some programming specialists claim on Java being slow, especially in comparison with C, and rather cumbersome. It requires a lot of typing and writing procedures in order to create a small application.
Multistage encoding takes quite of time, so that is why it is supposed to be better to hire more experienced programmers who can write more efficient codes, than use advantages of high-level Java. Besides, Java can not offer some useful features of other languages, like optimized memory usage, or hardware specific data types, or opportunities of multiple inheritance, etc. Recently numerous extensions and various Java capable browsers were developed. Java has very high efficiency and tremendous popularity among programmers, therefore bright future for it is easily predictable.
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