What is Java?

Objectives

1. Understand some of the background of Java.
2. Understand the goals of Java.
3. Understand the current status of Java.

Notes

• We already discussed how computers "understand" machine language
  • But that is hard for humans to use.
• And we discussed that high level languages were developed to make programming easier.
• And the language we will use is called Java.
• Java was
  • Developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems.
  • Officially released in May 1995.
  • Sun released most of Java as open source in May 2007.
  • Oracle Corporation purchased Sun around 2010
  • Oracle maintains a commitment to acting as a steward of Java Technology.
• Java is
  • Currently owned by Oracle.
  • It is free for personal use.
  • But you may need a paid subscription for commercial use
• The primary goals of Java are:
  1. It must be simple, object-oriented, and familiar.
     • Java was developed to be like c/c++ (oo and familiar)
     • But some complexities were removed.
  2. It must be robust and secure.
  3. It must be architecture-neutral and portable.
     • Thus the JVM.
  4. It must execute with high performance.
  5. It must be interpreted, threaded, and dynamic.
• There is no standard/standards body for java.
  • So Oracle sets the standard.
• The current version of Java is Java SE 23
  • But Java 21, 17, 11 and 8 are still supported.
  • Java 25 is expected to be released this year.
• Java is avialable from
  • Oracle
  • OpenJDK for an open source version.