[ Thanks to An Anonymous Reader for
this link. ]
“Links to relevant introductory developerWorks content,
other educational resources, as well as IBM downloads and products
give you a rich starting point for further investigation.“What is Java technology?
“Java technology is both programming language and a
platform:“The Java programming language is a high-level, object-oriented
language. The language is unusual because Java programs are both
compiled and interpreted. Compilation, which happens once per
program, translates Java code into an intermediate language called
Java bytecode. Bytecode is in turn parsed and run (interpreted) by
the Java Virtual Machine (JVM) — a translator between the
language and the underlying operating system and hardware. All
implementations of the programming language must emulate the JVM,
enabling Java programs to run on any system that has a version of
the JVM.“The Java platform is a software-only platform that runs on top
of various hardware platforms. It comes in three versions (see
Multiple editions of the Java platform, below). It consists of the
JVM and the Java Application Programming Interface (API) — a
large collection of ready-made software components (classes) that
ease the development and deployment of applets and applications.
The Java API spans everything from basic objects to networking and
security and XML generation and Web services. It is grouped into
libraries — known as packages — of related classes and
interfaces.“Along with the Java API, every full implementation of the Java
platform includes:“Development tools for compiling, running, monitoring,
debugging, and documenting applications.
Standard mechanisms for deploying applications to users.
User interface toolkits that let you create sophisticated graphical
user interfaces (GUIs).
Integration libraries that let programs access databases and
manipulate remote objects.”