A lowdown on... Java

 

Gallery

Posted on 21 Nov 2001 at 16:43

Do you see why Java may not be the most popular programming language for Microsoft and its domination of computing with its privileged control of the Windows platform? Not only is a rival company - Sun Microsystems - controlling the standards, but Windows becomes just another platform not the dominant, singular system that is inconveniently incompatible with most other systems.

The second main issue concerning Java and Microsoft is .Net. Microsoft has come relatively late to the Internet game, but now its whole strategy revolves around its .Net framework, which in turn is based on its own (Java-like) language, C##. Rather than going the route of building on Java as a global lingua-franca for delivering Web services, Microsoft has chosen to take the project 'in house'. Hence the arrival of C##. Naturally, it now has greater control over the pace and implementation of .NET.

A detailed comparison of Java and C## can be found here.

The makings of a baggy monster

As Java has become more established over the years, it has grown to fill ever-more areas of computing. Some of these are niche markets, some of them are growing computing phenomena, such as the importance of cell phone-based communications. For example, there are Java APIs (Application Programming Interface - sets of pre-defined function calls) for controlling digital televisions, operating embedded devices and communicating with networked application servers working in huge enterprise environments.

In an attempt to tidy up and rationalise what was becoming a bit of a baggy monster, Sun created a number of distinct 'editions' of Java, each relevant to different major types of application. This came with the creation of the Java 2 platform.

Whereas Java had been evolving in minor point releases - eg 1.1, 1.1.3, etc - the decision was taken to explicitly emphasise a major revision in Java's evolution. The creation of Java 2 (what would have been something like Java 1.4 under the old naming scheme) also saw the creation of the three editions: standard, enterprise and micro.

STANDARD EDITION

This involves core elements of Java, including the Java 2 SDK (software development kit) and associated tools. This is backwards compatible with earlier Java development kits, such as JDK 1.1.

ENTERPRISE EDITION

This is a framework for using Java within an enterprise-scale computing. It covers such areas as fail-over and load-balancing and other serious, large-scale server-side issues.

MICRO EDITION (J2ME)

A highly optimised version, suitable for embedding within a range of consumer electronics, such as pagers, cell phones and digital set-top boxes.

Sample code

By now, you may be wondering what Java actually looks like. This is not the place for an introductory tutorial - there are links for that further below - but it is nice to show what the 'magic code' actually looks like. A small taster for what Java programmers have to work with.

Here's the traditional 'hello world' program, which outputs a simple message. This is what it looks like in 'Application' form. (Generally speaking, a Java application is a stand-alone program with privileged access to the host computer.)