What is Java Programming? Feature, History

Java is one of the most used and prominent programming languages across the world. Having basic knowledge regarding Java programming is one of the essential that the people working in the technological background and IT industry. Questions from the theory portions related to Java programming can also be asked for the various competitive examinations that are happening around us. Here in the article are the complete details regarding the History of Java programming and the features that are associated with Java programming.

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History of Java Programming

Java is now one of the most prominent and widely used programming languages across the globe. Actually, Java was developed as a language for interactive television in the mid of ’90s. But the technology at that time of not that developed to use a language such as Java. The history of Java can be said to begin with the Green team. The team members who developed the language Java were called the Green team. The actual aim of the green team was to develop a language for digital devices such as set-up boxes, televisions, etc. Later as the internet era began in the twenty-first century, Java is used for internet programming since then. Java technology is now incorporated with Netscape.

The programming language Java was developed by James Gosling who is also called the father of Java. He developed the language in 1995 by giving the name initially Oak. In 1995 Sun Microsystems published the Sunworld 95, which is actually the Oak developed by James Gosling. After learning that there is a company named Oak technologies, the name was changed to Java.

Sun Microsystem officially released the Java version of 1.0 in the spring of 1995. After that, Sun released version 1.1 in the year 1997 and version 1.2 in the year 1998. Since version 1.2 was released in 1998 — which was drastically different from earlier versions – Java is also known as Java 2. We can use Java 2 Platform for building applications on various platforms that include Windows, Linux, and UNIX. Java 2 Platform can also be used for Internet Programming and Intranet Programming.

There are 20 versions of Java that is been released to date. The details regarding the same are given below.

1. JDK Alpha and Beta (1995)
2. JDK 1.0 (23rd Jan 1996)
3. JDK 1.1 (19th Feb 1997)
4. J2SE 1.2 (8th Dec 1998)
5. J2SE 1.3 (8th May 2000)
6. J2SE 1.4 (6th Feb 2002)
7. J2SE 5.0 (30th Sep 2004)
8. Java SE 6 (11th Dec 2006)
9. Java SE 7 (28th July 2011)
10. Java SE 8 (18th Mar 2014)
11. Java SE 9 (21st Sep 2017)
12. Java SE 10 (20th Mar 2018)
13. Java SE 11 (September 2018)
14. Java SE 12 (March 2019)
15. Java SE 13 (September 2019)
16. Java SE 14 (Mar 2020)
17. Java SE 15 (September 2020)
18. Java SE 16 (Mar 2021)
19. Java SE 17 (September 2021)
20. Java SE 18 (to be released by March 2022)

Features of Java Programming

Here are the details that you need to know about the various features of the Java programming language.

Object-Oriented: One of the most important features of java is that it is object-oriented. Java is based on object-oriented programming (OOPS) language where the class and methods describe the state and behavior of the object. The purpose of making code object-oriented software becomes more reusable between projects.

Simple: Java syntax is based on C++. Java programming language has removed many confusing features such as explicit pointers, operator overloading, etc.

Platform independent and hence Portable: Java code is compiled by using the compiler and converted into byte code that can be implemented on any machine.

Robust: Java language is robust in nature. It provides many safeguards to ensure reliable code. There is no need to remove unreferenced objects because there is automatic garbage collection in java.

Secured: Security becomes is one of the most important issues for a language that has to be addressed while being used for programming on the internet. Viruses and abuse of resources are everywhere on the internet so it should be ensured that no viruses enter through the applet. Java has no explicit pointers and Java programs run inside a virtual machine.

Multi-threaded: The term Multithreaded in the programming language sense means handling multiple tasks simultaneously. Java supports multithreaded programming. We can write a Java program that can do two or more tasks simultaneously.

Interpreted but not slow: Generally, execution of the interpreted programs is very slow compared to that of the compiled programs. But the java program is interpreted and still not very slow. Because Java has chosen an appropriate combination of compilation and interpretation. In other words, the performance of Java programs is high.

Distributed: Programs that work in a networked environment can be developed in Java.

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