Byte code
In the broadest terms, a Java program (or any computer program for that matter) means a sequential set of instructions for a computer, that tell it what to do. Before executing on a computer, a program must be compiled from a human-readable, high-level programming language into a machine-readable binary code.
In the case of Java, the human-readable text, called a source code, is stored in a .java file and can be compiled into byte code by the Java compiler javac. Java byte code is the instruction set for JVM. The byte code is stored in a .class file and can be interpreted and compiled into binary code by, JVM or, more specifically, by the Just-In-Time (JIT) compiler used by JVM. The binary code is then executed by a microprocessor. ...
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