JAVA PROGRAMMING LANGUAGE

HISTORY

Java, an object-oriented programming language was created by James Gosling and colleagues in the 1990s. Object-oriented programming introduced the context of objects t in the programming approach where objects here represent real words entity. An object-oriented program works as a collection of objects following a logical syntax or method to perform a given task. Other programming languages are supposed to be compiled as source code or machine code at runtime. Java was designed with a java compiler that converts the source code to intermediate code called byte code. This code is then run by a Java Virtual Machine because it is not machine specific.

In 1991, James Gosling decided to start a project going by the name “ Oak” and later became Java. His initial idea was to create a programming language with greater uniformity and simplicity to that of C/C++. Its first version was Java 1.0 launched in 1995. Its main marketing advertisement was the “Write Once, Run Anywhere”, and its free accessibility on popular platforms. Its platform security was average but was configurable hence provided limited access to files and network. Hence through this, it was acknowledged and integrated into the major web browsers in the form of a secure “applet” configuration. An applet is a Java program that runs in a Web browser.

PLATFORMS

Java is independent of any environment meaning that any program written in this language should run similarly on different hardware. Once the program is written the is no need to alter it in other environments. This is achieved by most Java compilers because they can compile the code halfway into bytecode. Java bytecode, in this case, is a syntax of simplified instructions towards the machine, specific to the Java platform. Then the code is run on a virtual machine (VM). There is also a wide variety of standardized libraries provided to allow access to the features of the host machines. For portability purposes, an interpreted virtual machine was used on the first implementation of the language. Due to these implementations, the program was compiled slower than the other languages, for example, written C++. Hence it had a negative reputation based on its poor performance.

There are four types of java programming languages according to Guru99.

• Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE): Java SE’s API(Application Programming Interface) offers the Java programming language’s core functionality. It defines all the basis of type and objects to high-level classes. It is used for networking, security, database access, graphical user interface (GUI) development, and XML parsing.
• Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE): The Java EE platform offers an API and runtime environment for developing and running highly scalable, large-scale, multi-tiered, reliable, and secure network applications.
• Java Programming Language Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME): The Java ME platform offers an API and a small-footprint virtual machine running Java programming language applications on small devices, like mobile phones.
• Java FX: JavaFX is a platform for developing rich internet applications using a lightweight user-interface API. It user hardware-accelerated graphics and media engines that help Java take advantage of higher-performance clients and a modern look-and-feel and high-level APIs for connecting to networked data sources.

BENEFITS AND DOWNSIDES

Java helps in creating programs and a variety of applications in its capacity as an Object-Oriented and general-purpose programming language. Java has its advantages and disadvantages, we are discussing them below:

Advantages

• Java is Simple: As long as a language is easily learned and understood it is considered to be easy. Java is direct, its syntax can be easily written, learned, maintained, and understood, the code is easily debug. It is also seen that its complexity is lower than that of languages like C and C++.
• Java is an Object-Oriented Programming language: hence it enhances code reusability and flexibility. It is possible to reuse the objects in another program through the specific features of object-oriented programming. It’s also more secure since the data and functions are linked in a single unit and can’t be accessed anyhow. It also helps in reorganizing bigger files into smaller ones hence making them easier to understand.
• Java is a secure language: Java reduces security threats and risks by removing pointers. A pointer can store the address of another value, this can cause unauthorized memory access. For classes, there is a security manager for each application that lets us define the access rules to the class.
• Java is cheap and economical to maintain: Java development and maintenance of programs is cheap because they are dependent on specific hardware infrastructure. And they can be executed on any machine this, in turn, reduces the extra cost of maintenance.
• Java is platform-independent: Java offers the Write Once Run Anywhere feature which is very effective to users. The Java byte code is platform-independent which means it can run on any machine having any operating system. The only requirement on the machine is that it needs to support the Java Virtual Machine(JVM).

• Java is a high-level programming language: Java is a human-readable language that constitutes the main characteristic of a high-level language. It doesn’t have much difference with human language hence it has a simple and easy syntax.
• Java supports portability feature: Due to its platform independence feature, java is portable.
• Java provides Automatic Garbage Collection: Whenever the different objects are not used by the program they are removed by the automatic garbage collection process. This process is regulated under the Java Virtual Machine.
• Java supports Multithreading: A thread in Java refers to is the tiniest unit of a process. Hence Java can run many threads simultaneously. This feature helps us maximize the use of the CPU. They increase the efficiency and performance of the Java application.

• Java is stable: Java programs command greater stability compared to other languages.
• Java is a distributed language: because it provides users the possibility of sharing data and programs with a large number of computers. So this leads to an increase in performance and efficiency.
• Java provides an efficient memory allocation strategy: Java allocates memory efficiently in two parts- Heap Area and Stack Area. The JVM chooses how it will allocate any of these two memories whenever a variable is created.

Disadvantages

• Java is slow and has a poor performance: As mentioned above Java is slow and requires more memory than other programming languages. The main reason behind this issue in performance is attributed to the additional compilation required by the JVM. Also, the garbage collector plays a role in this since it consumes more CPU.
• Java provides a not-so-attractive look and feels of the GUI(Graphical User Interface): The GUI in Java has too many inconsistencies and this leads to the inability of creating a complicated UI. .Even though there are many GUI builders in Java the issue lies in their maturity.
• Java provides no backup facility: Java does not focus on the backup of data it concentrates primarily on storage.
• Java requires significant memory space: Java needs way more memory space in its execution than the other programming languages like C++. This is due to the garbage collection extra usage of memory.
• Verbose and Complex codes: Java codes have many words and some can form long and complex sentences which can be difficult to understand. This weighs negatively on the clarity of the code. Java emphasizes more on its manageability which leads to an overly complex code.

JAVA TRENDS 2021

Following Eversoft research :

1. Java releases

• Text blocks: Text blocks arrived final and permanent functionality of the language. A preview version appeared in issue 13, then after suggestions from developers, new escape sequences were added to the second preview of version 14.
• Records (Second Preview): Thanks to records we can very concisely declare a class to which will be automatically added: constructor, getters, equals methods, hashCode, and toString.
• Hidden Classes: These classes are generated dynamically at runtime and cannot be directly linked to the byte code of other classes. Such classes will not be accessible by name and will be aggressively kicked from memory.

Bear in mind that JDK 16 is currently under development and is planned for release in March 2021.

2. Spring

Spring by far is the most popular Java framework and is used almost everywhere — from streaming platforms to online shopping. It is designed to create a backend for Java applications to the Java Enterprise Edition platform. Due to the fact, Spring is lightweight and relatively easy to implement, we expect its popularity to be even stronger in 2021. If you are looking to develop your skillset in the coming year, Spring would be a great bet.

3. Serverless architecture

Another ongoing trend that is going to be even more prevalent in 2021 is the migration to a serverless architecture. But what does Serverless mean? It is a cloud service model where the developer focuses solely on coding, not infrastructure. The term serverless architecture may be misleading, implying that there are no servers. Of course, the solution is built on servers. In this scenario, the programmer using serverless architecture does not have to deal with setting up machines, updating operating systems, network configuration, or scaling the application. These tasks belong to the provider of the serverless service, such as Amazon, Microsoft, Google. Each of the large public cloud providers offers services that can be called serverless.

4. Big Data

There is no doubt that Java is the most popular language used for developing big data projects. Bearing in mind the pace of its growth, we can easily predict it will dominate the technology in the future too. If considering a career in this subset of data science it is worth familiarizing yourself with the most popular tools for Java implementation in big data.

Xplenty is a cloud-based, easy-to-use data integration service that helps you move, process, and transform more data faster, reducing set-up time so businesses can unlock data quickly.

Apache Hadoop is an open-source framework for distributed computing and big data cluster analysis. The Hadoop ecosystem includes related software and tools, including Apache Hive, Apache HBase, Spark, Kafka, and more.

Cassandra (Apache Cassandra) is an open-source (NoSQL solution) distributed data management system. It was designed to handle large amounts of distributed data across multiple servers, which will continue to function even if one of the servers fails.

5. Integration testing

Unit tests focus on units of code, usually individual methods or lines of code. They only check local execution of methods, and it is not recommended for external and remote resources. On the other hand, integration testing is a type of test in which the software operation is checked in the context of interactions between modules to confirm it is working correctly. This method is still a little underappreciated, but due to the possibility of conducting integration tests (Testcontainers or JUnit 5) using database containers, queues, etc., it will gain in popularity during 2021.

Takeaway

There are more advantages than disadvantages. Despite all the limitations it’s facing, it is one of the most used languages in the world, and it’s mainly due to its platform independence, security, and maintainability features.