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Java Features:-
The primary objective of Java Programming language creation
was to make it portable, simple and secure programming language. Apart from
this, there are also some excellent features which play an important role in
the popularity of this language. The features of Java are also known as Java
buzzwords.
A list of the most important features of the Java language is
given below.
- Simple
- Object-Oriented
- Portable
- Platform Independent
- Secured
- Robust
- Architecture neutral
- Interpreted
- High Performance
- Multithreaded
- Distributed
- Dynamic
Simple
Java is very easy to learn, and its syntax is simple, clean and
easy to understand. According to Sun Microsystem, Java language is a simple
programming language because:
- Java
syntax is based on C++ (so easier for programmers to learn it after C++).
- Java
has removed many complicated and rarely-used features, for example,
explicit pointers, operator overloading, etc.
- There
is no need to remove unreferenced objects because there is an Automatic
Garbage Collection in Java.
Object-oriented
Java is an Object-Oriented programming
language. Everything in Java is an object. Object-oriented means we organize
our software as a combination of different types of objects that incorporate
both data and behavior.
Object-oriented programming (OOPs) is a methodology that
simplifies software development and maintenance by providing some rules.
Basic concepts of OOPs are:
- Object
- Class
- Inheritance
- Polymorphism
- Abstraction
- Encapsulation
Platform Independent
Java is platform independent because it is different from other
languages like C , C++, etc. which are compiled into platform specific machines
while Java is a write once, run anywhere language. A platform is the hardware
or software environment in which a program runs.
There are two types of platforms software-based and
hardware-based. Java provides a software-based platform.
The Java platform differs from most other platforms in the sense
that it is a software-based platform that runs on top of other hardware-based
platforms. It has two components:
- Runtime
Environment
- API(Application
Programming Interface)
Java code can be executed on multiple platforms, for example,
Windows, Linux, Sun Solaris, Mac/OS, etc. Java code is compiled by the compiler
and converted into bytecode. This bytecode is a platform-independent code
because it can be run on multiple platforms, i.e., Write Once and Run Anywhere
(WORA).
Secured
Java is best known for its security. With Java, we can develop
virus-free systems. Java is secured because:
- No explicit pointer
- Java Programs run inside a virtual machine sandbox
- Classloader: Classloader in Java is a part of the Java
Runtime Environment (JRE) which is used to load Java classes into the Java
Virtual Machine dynamically. It adds security by separating the package
for the classes of the local file system from those that are imported from
network sources.
- Bytecode Verifier: It checks the code
fragments for illegal code that can violate access rights to objects.
- Security Manager: It determines what
resources a class can access such as reading and writing to the local
disk.
Java language provides these securities by default. Some
security can also be provided by an application developer explicitly through
SSL, JAAS, Cryptography, etc.
Robust
The English mining of Robust is strong. Java is robust because:
- It
uses strong memory management.
- There
is a lack of pointers that avoids security problems.
- Java
provides automatic garbage collection which runs on the Java Virtual
Machine to get rid of objects which are not being used by a Java
application anymore.
- There
are exception handling and the type checking mechanism in Java. All these
points make Java robust.
Architecture-neutral
Java is architecture neutral because there are no implementation
dependent features, for example, the size of primitive types is fixed.
In C programming, int data type occupies 2 bytes of memory for
32-bit architecture and 4 bytes of memory for 64-bit architecture. However, it
occupies 4 bytes of memory for both 32 and 64-bit architectures in Java.
Portable
Java is portable because it facilitates you to carry the Java
bytecode to any platform. It doesn't require any implementation.
High-performance
Java is faster than other traditional interpreted programming
languages because Java bytecode is "close" to native code. It is
still a little bit slower than a compiled language (e.g., C++). Java is an
interpreted language that is why it is slower than compiled languages, e.g., C,
C++, etc.
Distributed
Java is distributed because it facilitates users to create
distributed applications in Java. RMI and EJB are used for creating distributed
applications. This feature of Java makes us able to access files by calling the
methods from any machine on the internet.
Multi-threaded
A thread is like a separate program, executing concurrently. We
can write Java programs that deal with many tasks at once by defining multiple
threads. The main advantage of multi-threading is that it doesn't occupy memory
for each thread. It shares a common memory area. Threads are important for
multi-media, Web applications, etc.
Dynamic
Java is a dynamic language. It supports the dynamic loading of
classes. It means classes are loaded on demand. It also supports functions from
its native languages, i.e., C and C++
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