Platform Independency in Java

Posted by Bhavesh Joshi On Wednesday, August 21, 2013 0 comments
Platform Independency in Java
Java is an object oriented multi paradigm structured and imperative programming language developed by oracle to cater the need of specifically designed circumstances. Based on the Write Once and Runs Anywhere concept, java codes running in one platform need not be configured again to run in another platform. This is the greatest advantage of java being a platform independent language. A Java application runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) platform regardless of computer architecture, proving the platform independent factor. For client server applications, java is the most popular computer language so far due to its smooth work flow and less number of complicacies. 

Initially developed at Sun Microsystems by James Gosling in 1995, Java is a combination of C & C++ to support both the structure as well as object oriented functions. Later Oracle took over the Sun Microsystems, so Java now is the property of Oracle. Based on the open platform technology, Java is under the GNU General Public License scheme termed as Free & Open Source Software (FOSS) that makes it so powerful to customize any sorts of things. Originally developed in 1991, Java was mainly designed for interactive television programs but, thought that was miles away from the then cable network system. Initially termed as Oak, later it became Green, finally Java inspired from Java Coffee Beans, a favorite for Java developers. With the advent of Java 2, multiple configurations building for various platforms became easier, thus came the popular boards like J2EE, J2ME aimed differently for desktop as well as mobile interface creation. 

In terms of properties of Java, it is object oriented, robust, secure, architecture neutral, portable, dynamic, threaded, interpreted and with high performance. Having all such rare facilities, Java became programmer’s delight. For example, one of the greatest strengths of Java is portability. It means a computer program written in Java language can run in any system of any hardware and of any type of operating system. This happens only in java as it compiles the code into Java byte code instead of a platform specific machine code. Also, the library used in Java has generic features like graphics, threading etc. 

In terms of performance, java programs are a bit slower and consume more memory than a C++ program, but the execution speed of Java is far better because of the introduction of Just in Time compiler. Later, with the significant introduction of Java Virtual Machine, inner class, StringBuffer class, hotspot etc. has made Java a programmers’ obvious choice. Another significant development is there are certain platforms that offer direct hardware support for Java. In detail, there are some micro controllers that can run java as hardware, deviating traditionally from software even from JVM. The automatic garbage controller for memory management is also a big plus in Java. Java runtime is responsible to recover the memory when objects are no longer in use and this helps Java to be faster. Garbage collection is another strong feature of Java and it happens when a program is in idle state. It is automatically triggered when the memory space is lesser and some amount of space is required to allocate a new object. Hotspot is such a garbage collector in Java which uses the concurrent mark sweep collector or CMS concept. Oracle is working to replace this age old hotspot running in CMS by Garbage First Collector concept. Making a deviation or modification, Java does not support the pointer function like C or C++. 

Java Applets are programs those are embedded in other applications mainly in the web pages and Java Servlet technology gives an option to web developers to extend the functions of a web server by a simple and consistent mechanism. Java Servlets are server side java components for response generation from the client side more or less same like Java Server Pages or JSP. Java Swing is a GUI or graphical user interface library for the Java SE platform. All these features has made Java as one of the leading programming languages that can be employed anywhere without any hindrances. 

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