Oak to Java

Java

In the early 1990s James Gosling, a Sun Microsystems employee, created a programming language called Oak. He named the C based objected oriented language after an oak tree that he viewed outside the window of his office. When a group of Sun Microsystem employees visited a local coffee shop, they suggested the change of Oak’s name to Java to differentiate it from another programming language with the same name.

Oak facilitated the communication between video game consoles and VCRs. Television set-top boxed for video-on-demand services was the intended use for the Oak application language. The World Wide Web evolved as set-top box manufacturers declined the software. To enter the software market for the World Wide Web, Oak’s developers shifted the focus to the internet and WebRunner, an Oak-enabled browser. WebRunner became the HotJava web browser.

Java is a pure object-oriented language. Humans learn about objects by examining the attributes and behaviors of objects such as cars, planes, computers, people, animals, plants, etc. The use of objects in the Java programming language is similar to the way people describe real-world objects. Class relationships group together similar characteristics of objects of a specified class – for example a class of vehicles. Object-oriented design (OOD) also models software components by their attributes and behaviors.

Programmers use Java to develop either software applications or Applets. Applications are programs that enable computer users to perform everyday tasks such as sending and receiving e-mail or performing calculations. An Applet is a Java program embedded in a HyperText Markup Language (HTML) document. Loading the desired Web page(s) in an internet browser will execute Java Applets.

Java programs are portable since no programming changes are necessary for the original program to run on any supported hardware/operating system platform. There are five phases for the execution of Java programs. These are edit, compile, load, verify, and execute. Programs are coded using an editor. The compiler creates bytecodes. The class loader reads the files containing bytecodes and stores them in memory. The bytecode verifier validates the bytecodes in accordance with Java’s security restrictions. The interpreter reads the bytecodes and translates them into a computer language prior to program execution.