Our next meeting presentation will be devoted to JAVA, Sun's new programming language and environment. JAVA consists of a full featured object-oriented language; a browser, HotJava; and some development tools. It is a contender to become the development tool of choice for Web-oriented applications, and potentially for many other applications as well, particularly ones where platform independence is a major consideration. Sun and Netscape have also announced JavaScript, an associated, simplified scripting language.
In Java, application code is pre-compiled to an intermediate form called byte code. At run time, the bytecode is interpreted, linked with library classes, and executed. Java is designed to be portable and easily distributed over a network. The fact that Java applets never see the host environment -- just the Java Virtual Machine that runs on the host -- has important implications for both portability and security.
As Dan Kara said in a recent issue of Application Development Trends, JAVA has the potential of bringing real utility to the Web once the initial infatuation with "surfing the net" wears off. As we all have learned, there are no free lunches in Oz or computer land, and performance, bandwidth, and security issues have been raised already. Even so, anyone who is seriously involved in Application Development needs to know more about JAVA -- it promises to be an important part of the technical scene for the next few years.
What is Java? Here are a few quotes from the source:
Sun's Java Web Page states that:
Java is a simple, robust, object-oriented, platform-independent multi-threaded, dynamic general-purpose programming environment. It's best for creating applets and applications for the Internet, intranets and any other complex, distributed network.
The Java Series Press Release at Addison Wesley states:
Java, the result of several years of research and development at Sun Microsystems, is the first language to provide a comprehensive solution to the challenge of programming for the Internet, providing portability, security, advanced networking, and robustness without compromising performance.
For the programmer's viewpoint, the Preface of The Java Virtual Machine provides the following description:
Java is a general-purpose object-oriented programming language. Its syntax is similar to that of C and C++, but omits semantic features that make C and C++ complex, confusing, and insecure.
Charles Francois' bio:
For the past six years, Charles B. Francois has been a systems engineer in the Wall Street offices of Sun Microsystems Inc. As a pre-sales consultant, he has been focusing on software development in the financial sector with a special attention to Object-Oriented methodologies and frameworks. Prior to joining Sun, Charles was a senior systems architect and Unix administrator at Merrill Lynch where he helped deliver a distributed bond trading system. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Yale University.
Please join us for this meeting, you won't want to miss it!
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