Learning Java

A Java Road Map

With everything that’s going on, it’s hard to keep track of what’s available now, what’s promised, and what has been around for some time. Here’s a road map that imposes some order on Java’s past, present, and future.

The Past: Java 1.0 and Java 1.1

Java 1.0 provided the basic framework for Java development: the language itself plus packages that let you write applets and simple applications. Although Java 1.0 is officially obsolete, it will be some time before vendors catch up with the newer releases.

Java 1.1 superseded Java 1.0. It incorporated major improvements in the AWT package ( Java’s original GUI facility) and many new features. Java 1.1 remains important, because it is supported natively by both the Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer browsers. For various political reasons, the future of the browser world is uncertain; to execute applets using any features of Java 2, you need to use the Java plug-in, which allows Netscape and IE to execute Java 2 code.

The Present: Java 2

Java 2 was released in December 1998, providing many improvements and additions. The most notable addition is Swing, which is a new user interface toolkit with capabilities far exceeding AWT’s. (Swing, AWT, and some other packages are now called the JFC, or Java Foundation Classes.) Here’s a brief overview of the most important features of the core Java 2 API:

JDBC (Java Database Connectivity)

A general facility for interacting with databases. (Introduced with Java 1.1.)

RMI ...