Features of Java | Introduction to Java

Hello people!

Here we are again with the continuing episode of the Java section that we have started. Last time the post was about the history, background, creation, evolution, features and introduction to java programming. The post was an in detail description of the history of java programming language. We tried to cover all the topics such as the need of java language, the cause of the creation of java language, how was the java language created and what purposes does it serve, how it evolved and what were the characteristics and special features of the java language. The java language is of quite importance in the industry so we will try to give a detailed description and knowledge related to the java programming language. Talking about the features of Java language, in the last post we discussed only a few features of the java language. As you all know, the greatest feature or you can say advantage of the java language is that it is a platform independent programming language. It can run on various platforms which means that no matter if you are a Windows user, Apple user or Linux users Java applications won’t be a problem. A very important feature in terms of security is the Java Bytecode. As mentioned in the last post, the output of a java compiler is not an executable code rather it is a Bytecode. The bytecode is not executed it has to be interpreted by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This solves the issues of security that one might face. And how it solves the security issue is mentioned in the last episode of Java, you can see it there. Well, we have presented a brief review of the last post just to freshen up your memory, so that you can understand and join the two posts better.

What we will be presenting today is a detailed post on the features of the Java and the factors that led to the creation of Java programming language. The main factors that led to the creation of Java programming language were:

·         Portability

·         Security

Other than this there were many other factors that played an important role according to the Java team. You may find the names of these factors written in many books and at many places as they were the one’s provided by the Java team itself.

Let us discuss those given factors one by one.

Object Oriented

One thing that should be understood till now is that the Java programming language was not designed to be a source code. It was not designed to be backward or forward compatible with any other language. This gave freedom to the Java team and as a result there was a clean, secure and portable language. Everything in Java is considered an object except simple types such as integers etc. This object approach proved very successful.

Robust

Another important key feature is the Robustness of the Java programming language. No doubt Java is a Robust programming language. As the Java language had to be used for the Web and to meet the needs of the web it had to be robust, so that it can execute reliably on any platform. As Java is an efficient and reliable language, to gain its reliability the Java programming language at the same time facilitates you and restricts you from certain things.

Strictly typed language

Let’s talk about the restriction which the Java programming language imposes on us. Java is a strictly typed language. The code written in Java should be perfect in terms of syntax. Loosely typed code won’t be tolerated. The Java code is checked at compile time as well as run time. Due to this quality of Java many unexpected bugs and errors are not created.

Memory management

The way in which the Java programming language facilitates a programmer is the Memory management. In other language such as C and C++ the memory management is done by the programmer itself. The programmer himself has to allocate and de allocate dynamic memory. What may happen is that the programmer may forget to free up the memory that has been allocated in the past or the programmer may free a memory that is still being used. This is not the case in Java. Java programming language manages the memory for you. Memory allocation and de-allocation is done by Java itself. There is garbage collection in Java for unused objects.

Dynamic

Java is a dynamic language it links code dynamically. The Java program has some run time information along with it so that the accesses to objects at run time may be resolved. This is important for the applets, because they update small fragments of code at run time.

Multithreaded

Java programming language supports multithreaded programs, which allows us to write program and do many other things at the same time. The java run time system comes with a decent solution for multiprocess synchronization so that you don’t have to worry about anything. As Java was designed for creating interactive networked programs.

Cross platform

This thing is the highlighted feature of the java programming language and I think you people are now well aware of this feature. As we have discussed this many times in the previous post as well as in this one. The Java team wanted to build a code that could run anywhere at any time. They wanted to create a code that was once created and created for good. The changes in operating system and hardware may not affect the code. And they succeeded in doing so.

Bytecode benefits

As discussed earlier that the output of a Java program is the Bytecode that is not executable. A Bytecode is interpreted rather than being executed by a Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This was not the first attempt to create a cross platform language. Before Java many other interpreted systems such as BASIC, Tel and PERL were present but they faced performance deficits. Contrary to this Java was designed to work on very low powered CPU’s. Performance issues were not faced by the Java language as it could be interpreted into the machine code on very low power CPU’s.

Simplicity

Java is a simple language.  It was designed in such a way that the programmers could adopt it easily. If you have any prior experience in programming, you know any programming language then Java is no big deal for you. In fact if you are a programmer of C and C++ then shifting to Java won’t be difficult. As Java has inherited its syntax and the object oriented property from C and C++. Basically shifting to a new programming language, it’s only the syntax that matters the rest is almost same everywhere.

Distributed

Internet is a distributed network and as you know Java was designed for the web. It handles protocols. Accessing a resource from a URL may not be much different than accessing a file. The earlier version of Java known as Oak had the intra address space messaging. Due to this objects present on two different computers could execute remotely.  

Well this is all for Java today, we have discussed in detail the factors and features of Java. I think that you all may be well aware of the Java language now. What is Java language, why was it created, when was it created what purposes did it serve all such questions have been answered. Now you know much about Java.

Keep following the Tech section of this blog to keep yourself updated. And don’t forget to subscribe. Enter your email at the top of this page and we will keep you informed about all the posts.