Java By Mariano Fernandez
The target of Java is to write a program once and then run this program on multiple operating systems.
Java has the following properties:
- Platform independent: Java program do in general not access directly system resources but use the Java virtual machine as abstraction. This makes Java programs highly portable. A Java program which is standard complaint and follows certain rules can run unmodified all several platforms, e.g. Windows or Linux.
- Object-orientated programming language: Except the primitive data types, all elements in Java are objects.
- Strongly-typed programming language: Java is strongly-typed, e.g. types of the elements must be pre-defined and conversion to other objects is relatively restricted.
- Interpreted and compiled language: Java source code is transfered into byte-code which does not depend on the target platform. This byte-code will be interpreted by the Java Virtual machine (JVM). The JVM contains a so called Hotspot-Compiler which translates critical byte-code into native code.
- Automatic memory management: Java manages the memory allocation and de-allocation for creating new objects. The program does not have direct access to the memory. The so-called garbage collector deletes automatically object to which no active pointer exists.
The Java syntax is similar to C++. Java is case sensitive, e.g. the variables myValue and myvalue will be treated as different variables.
Source -> http://www.vogella.de/
page revision: 1, last edited: 03 Nov 2009 03:06