Key Concepts of the Java Programming Language

Java(TM) programming language originated in 1991 as part of a research project to develop a programming language, called Oak. It was initially planned to be used as a communication method among the consumer devices. However, fail deals with the consumer devices companies had forced the software development team (Green team) to look into alternatives. At that time, World Wide Web was gaining popularity and the team realised the new programming language was great for developing multimedia components over the web, known as applets.

The Java(TM) programming language was designed to be Object-Oriented, Distributed, Simple, Multithreaded, Secure and Platform-Independent.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) was in mind when Java was created. OOP started with SIMULA-67 programming language in 1967 and has gained popularity since then with newer languages such as C++ and Microsoft C Sharp. Procedural programming such as COBOL and RPG stresses on sequence of coding statements in solving a problem while OOP stresses on the Object creation and the interaction among the Objects.

Java(TM) programming language is a distributed language because it supports distributed network technologies such as Method Invocation (RMI), Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) and Universal Resource Locators (URLs). In addition, the dynamic class loading capabilities allow codes to be downloaded over the Internet and executed on a personal computer.

Java(TM) programming language is simple as it removes the complex programming constructs found in predecessor programming languages. For example, pointers to memory location manipulations in C and C++ are oftenly misused. Java substitues it with Object References method. Garbage Collection feature found in Java also automatically removes objects that are no longer used. Java Boolean data type is either a true or false as compared to 1 or 0 in predecessor programming languages.

Multithreading, ie. performing more than 1 tasks at a time, optimises the system resources usage.

Java(TM) programming language, in conjunction with the JRE (Java Runtime Environment) ensure security via measurements such as prohibition of memory pointers manipulation and reading/writing to computer hard disk by distributed programs such as applets; verifies that all programs contain valid codes; supports digital signatures.

Java(TM) programming language is platform-independent, as it Write Once, Run Anywhere. A JVM (Java Virtual Machine) is required in every platform that runs Java program. JVM interprets the Java bytecode, loads the Java Class Libraries (also known as API - Application Programming Interface) and executes the Java programs.