Java Features –
Platform Independent – The concept of write once and run anywhere is known as the Platform independent. This is one of the important key feature of java language that makes java as the most powerful language. The programs written on one platform can run on any platform provided the platform must have the JVM.
Simple - Java is simple because some features makes as a simple language. In java programs are easy to write and debug. Java does not use the pointers explicitly. Because of strong memory manage and garbage collecter java provides the bug free system. It also has the automatic memory allocation and deallocation system is called as a Garbase Colletion.
Object Oriented - Each and every thing is in the class. So we can say that java is fully Object Oriented language, any language must follow at least the following four characteristics.
- Inheritance - You can create your own class using the behavior of the existing classes by extending them just to reuse the existing code and adding the additional features as needed.
- Encapsulation - Mechanism of combining the information and providing the abstraction.
- Polymorphism - One name multiple form, Polymorphism is the way of providing the different functionality by the functions having the same name based on the signatures of the methods.
- Dynamic binding - Sometimes we don't have the knowledge of objects about their specific types while writing our code. It is the way of providing the maximum functionality to a program about the specific type at runtime.
As the languages like Objective C, C++ fulfills the above four characteristics yet they are not fully object oriented languages because they are structured as well as object oriented languages. But in case of java, it is a fully Object Oriented language because object is at the outer most level of data structure in java. No stand alone methods, constants, and variables are there in java. Everything in java is object even the primitive data types can also be converted into object by using the wrapper class.
Robust - Java has the strong memory allocation and automatic garbage collection mechanism. It provides the powerful exception handling and type checking mechanism as compare to other programming languages. Compiler checks the program whether there any error and interpreter checks any run time error and makes the system secure from crash. All of the above features makes the java language robust.
Distributed - The widely used protocols like HTTP and FTP are developed in java. Internet programmers can call functions on these protocols and can get access the files from any remote machine on the internet rather than writing codes on their local system.
Portable - The feature Write-once-run-anywhere makes the java language portable provided that the system must have interpreter for the JVM. Java also have the standard data size irrespective of operating system or the processor. These features makes the java as a portable language.
Dynamic - While executing the java program the user can get the required files dynamically from a local drive or from a computer thousands of miles away from the user just by connecting with the Internet.
Secure - Java does not use memory pointers explicitly. All the programs in java are run under an area known as the sand box. Security manager determines the accessibility options of a class like reading and writing a file to the local disk. Java uses the public key encryption system to allow the java applications to transmit over the internet in the secure encrypted form. The bytecode Verifier checks the classes after loading.
Performance - Java uses native code usage, and lightweight process called threads. In the beginning interpretation of bytecode resulted the performance slow but the advance version of JVM uses the adaptive and just in time compilation technique that improves the performance.
Multithreaded - As we all know several features of Java like Secure, Robust, Portable, dynamic etc; you will be more delighted to know another feature of Java which is Multithreaded.
Java is also a Multithreaded programming language. Multithreading means a single program having different threads executing independently at the same time. Multiple threads execute instructions according to the program code in a process or a program. Multithreading works the similar way as multiple processes run on one computer.
Multithreading programming is a very interesting concept in Java. In multithreaded programs not even a single thread disturbs the execution of other thread. Threads are obtained from the pool of available ready to run threads and they run on the system CPUs. This is how Multithreading works in Java which you will soon come to know in details in later chapters.
Interpreted - We all know that Java is an interpreted language as well. With an interpreted language such as Java, programs run directly from the source code.
The interpreter program reads the source code and translates it on the fly into computations. Thus, Java as an interpreted language depends on an interpreter program.
The versatility of being platform independent makes Java to outshine from other languages. The source code to be written and distributed is platform independent.
Another advantage of Java as an interpreted language is its error debugging quality. Due to this any error occurring in the program gets traced. This is how it is different to work with Java.
Architecture Neutral - The term architectural neutral seems to be weird, but yes Java is an architectural neutral language as well. The growing popularity of networks makes developers think distributed. In the world of network it is essential that the applications must be able to migrate easily to different computer systems. Not only to computer systems but to a wide variety of hardware architecture and Operating system architectures as well. The Java compiler does this by generating byte code instructions, to be easily interpreted on any machine and to be easily translated into native machine code on the fly. The compiler generates an architecture-neutral object file format to enable a Java application to execute anywhere on the network and then the compiled code is executed on many processors, given the presence of the Java runtime system. Hence Java was designed to support applications on network. This feature of Java has thrived the programming language
