Java is an object-oriented programming language released in 1995 by Sun Microsystems as a core component of the Java platform. Since 2009, the language has been developed by Oracle, which acquired Sun Microsystems that year. In the official implementation, Java programs are compiled into byte code, which is interpreted by a virtual machine for a specific platform when executed.
“Oracle provides a Java compiler and a Java virtual machine that meet the Java Community Process specification under the GNU General Public License.
The language significantly borrowed syntax from C and C++. In particular, the C++ object model was taken as a basis, but it was modified. The possibility of some conflict situations that could arise due to programmer’s mistakes has been eliminated and the process of developing object-oriented programs has been facilitated. A number of actions that programmers must perform in C/C++ are entrusted to a virtual machine. First of all, Java was developed as a platform-independent language, so it has fewer low-level capabilities for working with hardware, which, for example, reduces the speed of programs in comparison with C++. If necessary, Java allows you to call subroutines written in other programming languages.
Java influenced the development of J++, which was developed by Microsoft. Work on J++ was stopped due to a lawsuit filed by Sun Microsystems, as this programming language was a modification of Java. Later, J# was released in the new Microsoft .NET platform to facilitate the migration of J++ or Java programmers to the new platform. Over time, the new C# programming language became the main language of the platform, adopting much from Java. J# was last included in the 2005 version of Microsoft Visual Studio. The JavaScript scripting language has a similar name and syntax to Java, but is not related to Java.
Name.
The language was originally called Oak and was developed by James Gosling for programming consumer electronic devices. It was later renamed Java and was used to write client applications and server software. It is named after the Java coffee brand, which, in turn, was named after the island of the same name (Java), so the official emblem of the language depicts a cup of coffee. There is another version of the origin of the name of the language, associated with an allusion to the coffee machine as an example of a household device, for programming which the language was originally created.
Initial goals:
There were five original goals in the creation of the Java programming language:
- The language syntax should be “simple, object-oriented, and familiar”.
- The implementation should be “fault tolerant and secure”.
- “Architecture independence and portability” must be preserved.
- High performance of execution
- The language should be “interpreted, threaded, with dynamic module binding”.