History of Java

The java programming language is becoming more and more popular each day. It is the language without which one cannot even hope to a land a job these days. But has somebody even wondered how this language came about? There are many stories about, many books have been written. Here is my version (not approved by Sun Microsystems).

The java programming language originated in Indonesia. It was meant to be used by the tourists that visit that country each year. Why would tourists want to use computer? Well, these are no ordinary tourists. They are rich tourists. Have they not been rich, they would not travel half way around the world to visit this place. Most people would be content to see just what is available near by. For example, if you are a texan living in Dallas, you will visit the stockyards or may be the trinity river park. If you live in New Orleans area, you would see st. mary's bayou. Once in your lifetime, one will probably visit Hawaii or Niagara. But going to Indonesia and its islands, Bali, Java, etc is not for the ordinary people. Anyway, coming back to the question why these tourists need to use computer programs. They go there not just to have fun and also get some work done in a fun atmosphere as these people are very important people.

From the very start java was supposed to be computer independent. That means if you write a program in java in one computer, it should run in all computers. This was necessary because tourists bring all kinds of computers with them. Some bring Windows machine, some Apple mackintosh. Some of the affluent ones bring Sun server workstations or even a super computer.

Before starting to create java they also sought to see if there have similar stuff done already. Even though they could find none, they found they can use lots of feature from some existing laguages. One such language they found was C++. C++ was an advancement over the language called C. In fact, ideas of C++ was already hidden in C. In that language, one can increment a variable, say i, by applying the ++ operator e.g. i++. This would increase the value of the variable i by one. If i had a value of 5, it would make it 6, etc. What a vision!

Anyway, coming back to C++, it made an important advancement over C by introducing the idea of a class. To understand class, one has to undestand structure which was already used in C. The structure is a group of variables. For example, you have a name, an address, age etc. for any person. In stead of using them separately, in C one can group them together and call it a person. The creator of C++ said there is no need to expose these variables (name, address, etc) to the outside world. They said these details should be hidden from the outside world. They called this concept encapsulation.

Another important contribution of C++ was the concept of inheritence. This concept can be best explained by example. Let's go back to the example of the person. A person is very general concept. There can be many different kinds of persons, e.g doctors, lawyers, teachers, or just a bum! But each of these people have a name, an address, age etc. Even a bum has all these. The creator of C++ thought one can define a base class call person and other classes can be derived from it. In plain english, this would mean, a doctor is special kind of person, lawyer is another special kind of person. Now the common attributes of all these kinds of people can be put in the person class and special attributes can be put in the derived classes, e.g. hospital for the doctor, court for the lawyer, and nothing for the bum.

But C++ was still complex with things like pointers, memory leak and multiple inheritence. The pointer concept was taken from C and it was very messy! The pointer is special type of variable that points to other variables. Since there was no guidelines as to how to use these pointers, it was very easy loose track of them. In a typical two thousand lines program, one would frequently end up with hundredes of pointers pointing to thousands, some of them are pointers and some just plain variables. Needless to say this made a large program extremely difficult to read and when the programmer left for another company, they would have no other choice than to just throw away his program! It was sometimes necessary to do this even when the programmer was around and very much alive. This is because the pointers he created inside his program had taken a life of their own and defy every attempt to predict how the program should behave. Memory management was also another weak point of C and C++. The programmer was responsible for cleaning up the memory their program would allocate and use. Failure to do so will result in a crash of the whole computer.

Multiple inheritence, though sparingly used, was another feature of C++ which made a programmer's life miserable. It, however, had its use, especially in job interviews. This one question, they thought, helped them separate the wheat from the chaff.

But C++ still had some nice and simple features, like inheritence, encapsulation, etc. They are something one can describe in plain english, something one can explain to a layman. So the creator of java decided to take the good features of inherience, encapsulation, and polymorphism from C++, while discarding the bad features such as multiple inherience, pointers etc. The memory management was improved in java where the programmer will not be held responsible for memory management. They can clean up after themselves if they want to get extra credit, but they do not need to. Needless to say all these was great news to the tourists in Indonesia!

Java introduced lot of clarity in notations too. For example, in C++ they would say class doctor:person to mean doctor is derived from person. It is obviously very cryptic. The same situation can be expressed in java as class doctor extends person , which is much easier to understand. But there are few awkward stuff in java too especially when someone says class bum extends person (my last bum joke)!

Java made an important contribution in the graphical user interface (GUI) area. C++ was really lacking in expertise here. They visual C++, but worked only on windows environment. But it did not work in UNIX systems or mackintoshes. Just like other features of java, this was also supposed to be platform independent. This was further necessary because one can put some little GUI on a web page which can be views over the internet. And one cannot control what kind of computers other will have.

After a while, it was necessary to call programs from one computer to another computer. To do this, they created J2EE. I am not sure how they came up with the name J2EE. The 'J' of J2EE, of course, means "Java", and I can be reasonably sure '2' stands for 'To'. But I do not know what the 'EE' part is all about, probably some kind of extension. Or at this point they ran out of names to think of. So they decided to have one of those just another vague acronyms.

If you would like, you can also visit my home page.

Copyright © 2003 Gautam Dev. All rights reserved

---

Is Your Family Protected?

When you think... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Subcontracting ? Overview for Microsoft Business Solutions Partner

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains is very popular ERP/MRP applications... Read More

Microsoft Update - 5 Reasons to Update Service Pack 2

Microsoft released Service Pack 2 (SP2) for the Windows XP... Read More

Imagine if Everyone Working In Your Office Was In Synch?

Microsoft-Outlook is a pretty amazing program. So much more than... Read More

Lotus Domino: Application Integration ? A Programmer View

There are two approaches for application integration:? Programmer's approach ?... Read More

Lotus Domino: Reports and Connectors ? Crystal Reports, XML, ODBC/JDBC, OLE

Lotus Notes Domino is very efficient in electronic document workflow... Read More

How To Develop Software For Your Business

Software development is a risky business.Many software developers are barely... Read More

5 Easy File Management Tips in Microsoft Word

How many steps does it take you to locate and... Read More

Four Easy Ways To Prevent Spyware

How would you like to prevent spyware and adware from... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains FA: Fixed Assets ? Overview For Consultant

Great Plains Fixed Assets Management module is a robust tool... Read More

A Time-Saving Programming Tactic that Doesn?t Work

Let's say that you have a software project that's under... Read More

Know Linux

Linux essentials:It's free for download but you have to pay... Read More

Microsoft CRM Data Import FAQ

Microsoft CRM has built-in conversion tool, however you should probably... Read More

Resume Software ? Advantages Revealed

The various resume software offered, particularly on the internet, can... Read More

Microsoft CRM Implementation for Large Corporation ? overview

Microsoft Business Solutions CRM is now approaching the phase of... Read More

Three Steps To Windows Safety Heaven

Now there are Three Steps To Heaven Just listen and... Read More

Software For Your Hard-Drive

All your software is stored on a hard-drive. But how... Read More

The Truth: Netzero 3G

We've all seen the ads on TV for Netzero 3G.... Read More

Microsoft RMS Customization ? PO Items Receiving in Great Plains

Microsoft Retail Management (RMS) and Microsoft Great Plains are retail... Read More

How to Upgrade Dexterity Customization ? Tips for IT Manager

If you have Microsoft Great Plains and support it... Read More

Microsoft CRM Messaging through Lotus Domino eMail Server - Balanced Solution

Microsoft CRM and IBM Lotus Notes Domino seem to be... Read More

The Bluebird Project

The objective for Zandi Digital is to make available clever... Read More

How to Choose the Right Accounting Software for Your Business

With any good luck and a good amount of hard... Read More

What To Do When Windows Wont Boot

When Windows fails to boot it is normally caused by... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Reporting ? Overview for Developer

Looks like Microsoft Great Plains becomes more and more... Read More

15 Questions to Ask Your Software Vendor

When making a decision to buy any piece of software... Read More

Did You Ever Want to Completely Erase Everything on Your Computer?

Did you ever want to erase everything on your computer?... Read More

Think Of This

Think of this, first we had the HAM Radio, then... Read More

Linux Secrets

The first thing that you will notice about Linux Red... Read More

Microsoft Great Plains Chemicals & Paint Industry Implementation & Customization Notes

Microsoft Great Plains fits to majority of industries, in the... Read More

Monitoring Software Can be Used for Spying as Well

We all already got used to computer monitoring both at... Read More

Unofficial Windows 98 SE Service Pack 2.0 RC2

Microsoft has never released a service pack for Windows98 SE,... Read More

Manufacturing Solutions for Microsoft Great Plains ? Overview for Consultant

Microsoft Business Solutions Great Plains has full-featured manufacturing set of... Read More