1.THE JAVA REVOLUTION
REVOLUTIONARY PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE
Java is a general purpose, object oriented programming language developed by Sun Microsystems of USA in 1991. Originally called Oak by James Gosling, one of the inventors of the language, Due to some legal obligations, it was named ‘Java’. Java was designed for the development of software for consumer electronic devices like TVs, VCR, Toasters and such other electronic machines. The goal had a strong impact on the development team to make the language simple, portable and highly reliable.
The striking feature of the language is that it is a platform-neutral language. Java is the first programming language that is not tied to any particular hardware or operating system. Programs developed in Java can be executed anywhere on any system. We can call Java as a revolutionary technology because it has brought in a fundamental shift in how we develop and use programs.
JAVA FEATURES
Java according to it’s developers exhibits some of the features such as
• Compiled and Interpreted
• Platform-Independent and Portable
• Object-Oriented
• Robust and Secure
• Distributed
• Similar, Small, Familiar and Powerful
• Multithreaded and Interactive
• High Performance
Compiled and Interpreted:
Languages like C and C++ are only complied & languages like VB, BASIC etc., are only interpreted. In C & in C++ after compilation, the source code is directly into machine code which is stores in ‘.obj’ file. As the machine code is system dependent, this ‘.obj’ file cannot run on a different hardware.
To overcome this problem, in Java after compilation, the source code is converted into an intermediate code called the ‘byte code’ which is machine independent & is stored in ‘.class’ file.
Once the ‘.class’ file is generated, each statement in the ‘.class’ file is translated into machine code & is immediately executed by the interpreter one line...