My intro to Java

Hello, Today I want to discuss my thoughts on Java and what I know about the language thus far in my research. We can begin with what is Java exactly?

Java is an object oriented programming language that was created in 1995 by Sun Microsystems. Sun Microsystems or Sun for short was an American company that sold both computer hardware and software. Sun was acquired by Oracle in 2009–2010. Java was created by a team lead by James Gosling, James wanted a language to allow consumer electronic devices to communicate with each other. The Java virtual machine’s two main functions are to allow Java programs to run on any device or operating systems, known as the “Write once, run anywhere” and to manage and optimize program memory. The JVM was a revelation in the mid 90’s because program memory was managed by the software developer. It’s also how we run Java programs, we can configure the JVM settings which allows it to manage a program’s resources during execution. As we mentioned above the JVM manages memory through a process called garbage collection, which identifies and eliminates unused memory in a Java program. When Java was introduced to the public, it came under a lot of criticism for having this extra step in compiling. Comparison to its biggest competitor at the time C++, because of consistent development and optimization the garbage collection has vastly improved. While we’re here let’s talk about what was going on during this time.

In the 90’s the biggest innovation in the world at the time was the invention of the internet. Though the internet was invented in the late 70’s early 80’s, it was really only available on college campuses. It was unleashed on the public a little before the Java language was created. With this new invention people were connected more than ever and the write once, run once philosophy was very appealing but the compiling time the JVM needed to do garbage collection made the C++ more appealing to professionals.

Santa Clara was the home of Sun Microsystems, part of Silicon Valley. At the time of Java creation Apple recently was moved to the growing Silicon Valley bringing with it Steve Jobs and the Macintosh personal computers. Jobs was not pleased with the appearance of the headquarters of Apple and moved to the second and current location, the Spaceship. This made Silicon valley a popular hotspot and attracted more tech companies and more minds to work on increasing the compiling time of Java.

Java can be used to create complete applications that run on a single computer or distributed among servers and clients in a network. Java is the go-to language for server side development projects. Java has become the primary language for Android apps. Because of its fast execution with less bugs and its backwards compatibility with early versions This made Java critical to know for business applications because without it being backwards compatible, programs would have to be rewritten after a new release. With Millions of programs written that would cause a slight issue. This leads to why I am learning Java.

The ability to read Java and improve/update legacy code makes me a more impressive developer. I also want to improve my ability to write object oriented code, other languages use the object oriented paradigm but Java restricts you to only write in this manner. I hope that it will improve my ability to write OOP code in Javascript and Ruby. Finally, Java is pretty easy to learn and my switch to focus on backend development has made Java an appealing language to learn.

Thanks for reading!