What is Java?

Java is a programming language and a platform. Java is a high level, robust,

object-oriented and secure programming language.

Java was developed by Sun Microsystems (which is now the subsidiary of Oracle) in the year
1995. James Gosling is known as the father of Java. Before Java, its name was Oak. Since
Oak was already a registered company, so James Gosling and his team changed the name
from Oak to Java.

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

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

Application
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. Examples of standalone application 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 a dynamic page is
called a 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 an enterprise application. It has advantages like high-level
security, load balancing, and clustering. In Java, EJB

is used for creating enterprise applications.

4) Mobile Application

An application which is created for mobile devices is called a mobile

application. 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 that is mainly used to develop web and

enterprise applications. It is built on top of the 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 that is dedicated to mobile applications.

4) JavaFX

It is used to develop rich internet applications. It uses a lightweight user

interface API.

Features of Java
The primary objective of Java programming language creation was to
make it portable, simple and secure programming language. Apart from
this, there are also some excellent features which play an important role
in the popularity of this language. The features of Java are also known as
Java buzzwords.

A list of the most important features of the Java language is given below.

1. Simple
2. Object-Oriented
3. Portable
4. Platform independent
5. Secured
6. Robust
7. Interpreted
8. High Performance
9. Multithreaded
10. Distributed
11. Dynamic

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

o Java syntax is based on C++ (so easier for programmers to learn it after
C++).
o Java has removed many complicated and rarely-used features, for
example, explicit pointers, operator overloading, etc.
 o There is no need to remove unreferenced objects because there is an
Automatic Garbage Collection in Java.

Object-oriented
Java is an 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 incorporate both data and behavior.

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 a software-based platform.

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

1. Runtime Environment
2. API(Application Programming Interface)

Java code can be executed on multiple platforms, for example, 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 a virtual machine sandbox
Robust
The English mining of Robust is strong. Java is robust because:

o It uses strong memory management.

o There is a lack of pointers that avoids security problems.
o Java provides automatic garbage collection which runs on the Java Virtual
Machine to get rid of objects which are not being used by a Java
application anymore.
o There are exception handling and the type checking mechanism in Java.
All these points make Java robust.

Portable
Java is portable because it facilitates you to carry the Java bytecode to any platform. It doesn't
require any implementation.

High-performance
Java is faster than other traditional interpreted programming languages because Java
bytecode is "close" to native code. It is still a little bit slower than a compiled language (e.g.,
C++). Java is an interpreted language that is why it is slower than compiled languages, e.g.,
C, C++, etc.

Distributed
Java is distributed because it facilitates users to create distributed applications in Java. RMI
and EJB are used for creating distributed applications. This feature of Java makes us able to
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.

Dynamic
Java is a dynamic language. It supports the dynamic loading of classes. It
means classes are loaded on demand. It also supports functions from its
native languages, i.e., C and C++.

C++ vs Java
There are many differences and similarities between the C++
programming language and Java. A list of top differences between C++
and Java are given below:

Features C++ Java

Abstraction Yes Yes

Encapsulation Yes Yes

Single Inheritance Yes Yes

Multiple Inheritance Yes No

Features C++ Java

Polymorphism Yes Yes

Static Binding Yes Yes

Dynamic Binding Yes Yes

Operator Overloading Yes No

Header Files Yes No

Pointers Yes No

Global Variables Yes No

Template Class Yes No

Interference and Packages No Yes

API No Yes

Note

o Java doesn't support default arguments like C++.

o Java does not support header files like C++. Java uses the import keyword
to include different classes and methods.