Java

CS 284 (CSA), Spring 2005

The Java programming language, developed by Sun Microsystems Corp. in the 1990s, has become widely used throughout the software development community for many reasons. For example, the Java language includes strategic simplifications of C and C++ (e.g., no pointers) while sharing much of the syntax of those languages, making it easy for C/C++ programmers to switch to Java when they don't need all of the low-level power of these earlier languages. Java, an object-oriented language, readily supports modern approaches to software development. Java's "virtual machine" approach to compilation/interpretation makes it possible to run a single Java program on many different computing platforms with little or no modification, a feature that supports multi-platform systems such as Web-based applications. And Java's enormous collections of (open-source) class libraries make it quick for software developers to create sophisticated applications by reusing reliable code.

• Examples of graphics programming
• Processes, threads, and Java