Introduction to Java Programming Language

Java is a general-purpose and platform independent programming language with many features, making it most widely used programming language.

Java programming language is being used everywhere, according to the company that own Java, Oracle, Java is running on 3 billion devices worldwide.

There are major advantages to Java Programming language that make it one of the most used programming languages. Some such advantages are: platform independent, object oriented, is fast, is secure, it has a large standard library and many more. Lets see those main features in a bit more details:

Java is Platform Independent

Since the starting days Java was built with the philosophy of writing the code once and running it everywhere. The code written in Java on one platform, an operating system such as Windows, will run on every other platform (that have Java installed) without any code modifications.

To be able to run Java on a machine, you must first install an abstract machine called Java Virtual Machine (JVM). Java Virtual Machine executes the Java code (bytecodes). Then, the Central Processing Unit (CPU) executes the Java Virtual Machine. Because of all JVMs are the same, same Java code will execute exactly the same on every JVM, installed on different platforms, making JAVA platform independent.

Java is Object Oriented Programming Language

Older programming languages such as C, Fortran, Basic, Pascal and so on, are procedural programming languages, meaning they execute linearly, from top to bottom. Java on the other hand, is an Object Oriented Programming Language which uses objects, that contain data in the form of attributes and functions in the form of procedures. In Object Oriented Programming Languages, complex problems are divided into smaller sets of which are known as Objects. The usage of Objects makes code Reusable, it has design benefits and the code is a lot easier to maintain. All those, because you can refer to specific objects within the code and not whole files.

Java is fast

Java was considered to be a slow programming language for the reason that it did take a long time for the Virtual Machine to start. Later versions of JVMs are becoming a lot faster to execute as JVM continuously analyses program performance for hot spots which are executed frequently or repeatedly. Such blocks of code are then optimised, leading to high performance execution with a minimum of overhead.

Java is secure

The Java platform was designed with security in mind. Java Programming Language is type safe and provides automatic garbage collection, enhancing the robustness of the code. Also Java Virtual Machine has secure class loading and verification mechanisms to make sure that only legitimate Java code is executed. Also Java APIs support a wide range of cryptographic services such as message authentication codes, key generators, digital signatures and so on.

Java contains large standard library

Java has become increasingly popular because of the availability of large standard library. Java standard library has thousands of classes and functions which software developers can use for an easier application development. As an example, some of the main libraries are: java.lang, java.util, java.io and so on. For more specific libraries refer to the Java APIs.