Why use Java at all? Is it worth learning a new language and a new platform? This section explores some of the key benefits of Java.
Sun identifies “Write once, run anywhere” as the core value proposition of the Java platform. Translated from business jargon, this means that the most important promise of Java technology is that you have to write your application only once—for the Java platform—and then you’ll be able to run it anywhere.
Anywhere, that is, that supports the Java platform. Fortunately, Java support is becoming ubiquitous. It is integrated into practically all major operating systems. It is built into the popular web browsers, which places it on virtually every Internet-connected PC in the world. It is even being built into consumer electronic devices such as television set-top boxes, PDAs, and cell phones.
Another key benefit of Java is its security features. Both the language and the platform were designed from the ground up with security in mind. The Java platform allows users to download untrusted code over a network and run it in a secure environment in which it cannot do any harm: untrusted code cannot infect the host system with a virus, cannot read or write files from the hard drive, and so forth. This capability alone makes the Java platform unique.
Java 1.2 took the security model a step further. It made security levels and restrictions highly configurable and extended them beyond applets. As of Java 1.2, any Java code, whether it is an applet, a servlet, a JavaBeans component, or a complete Java application, can be run with restricted permissions that prevent it from doing harm to the host system.
The security features of the Java language and platform have been subjected to intense scrutiny by security experts around the world. In the earlier days of Java, security-related bugs, some of them potentially serious, were found and promptly fixed. Because of the strong security promises Java makes, it is big news when a new security bug is found. No other mainstream platform can make security guarantees nearly as strong as those Java makes. No one can say that Java security holes will not be found in the future, but if Java’s security is not yet perfect, it has been proven strong enough for practical day-to-day use and is certainly better than any of the alternatives.
Sun’s corporate motto has always been “The network is the computer.” The designers of the Java platform believed in the importance of networking and designed the Java platform to be network-centric. From a programmer’s point of view, Java makes it easy to work with resources across a network and to create network-based applications using client/server or multitier architectures.
Java is both dynamic and extensible. Java code is organized in modular object-oriented units called classes. Classes are stored in separate files and are loaded into the Java interpreter only when needed. This means that an application can decide as it is running what classes it needs and can load them when it needs them. It also means that a program can dynamically extend itself by loading the classes it needs to expand its functionality.
The network-centric design of the Java platform means that a Java application can dynamically extend itself by loading new classes over a network. An application that takes advantage of these features ceases to be a monolithic block of code. Instead, it becomes an interacting collection of independent software components. Thus, Java enables a powerful new metaphor of application design and development.
The Java language and the Java platform were designed from the start with the rest of the world in mind. When it was created, Java was the only commonly used programming language that had internationalization features at its core rather than tacked on as an afterthought. While most programming languages use 8-bit characters that represent only the alphabets of English and Western European languages, Java uses 16-bit Unicode characters that represent the phonetic alphabets and ideographic character sets of the entire world. Java’s internationalization features are not restricted to just low-level character representation, however. The features permeate the Java platform, making it easier to write internationalized programs with Java than it is with any other environment.
As described earlier, Java programs are compiled to a portable intermediate form known as byte codes, rather than to native machine-language instructions. The Java Virtual Machine runs a Java program by interpreting these portable byte-code instructions. This architecture means that Java programs are faster than programs or scripts written in purely interpreted languages, but Java programs are typically slower than C and C++ programs compiled to native machine language. Keep in mind, however, that although Java programs are compiled to byte code, not all of the Java platform is implemented with interpreted byte codes. For efficiency, computationally intensive portions of the Java platform—such as the string-manipulation methods—are implemented using native machine code.
Although early releases of Java suffered from performance problems, the speed of the Java VM has improved dramatically with each new release. The VM has been highly tuned and optimized in many significant ways. Furthermore, most current implementations include a just-in-time (JIT) compiler, which converts Java byte codes to native machine instructions on the fly. Using sophisticated JIT compilers, Java programs can execute at speeds comparable to the speeds of native C and C++ applications.
Java is a portable, interpreted language; Java programs run almost as fast as native, nonportable C and C++ programs. Performance used to be an issue that made some programmers avoid using Java. With the improvements made in Java 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, and 5.0, performance issues should no longer keep anyone away.
The final, and perhaps most important, reason to use Java is that programmers like it. Java is an elegant language combined with a powerful and (usually) well-designed set of APIs. Programmers enjoy programming in Java and are often amazed at how quickly they can get results with it. Because Java is a simple and elegant language with a well-designed, intuitive set of APIs, programmers write better code with fewer bugs than for other platforms, thus reducing development time.
Get Java in a Nutshell, 5th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.
