UNIX® User’s Handbook, Second Edition

Chapter 25. Java

Introduction

Java, the programming language, has gained tremendous popularity since its introduction in late 1995. Java was initially created to build applications for heterogeneous consumer electronic devices. The World Wide Web was experiencing explosive growth and developers craved more than static Web pages. Java developers soon realized that an architecture-independent language such as Java filled this technology gap. Because the Internet ran on a variety of machines, the ability to write a program once with the potential to execute the program on all those machines was extremely advantageous. This fueled the opportunity for widespread adoption of Java.

Java’s creators wanted a programming language that would be easy to learn ...