Java is one of the most popular and widely used programming languages. Java has been one of the most popular programming languages for many years. Java is Object Oriented. However, it is not considered as pure object-oriented as it provides support for primitive data types (like int, char, etc) The Java codes are first compiled into byte code (machine-independent code). Then the byte code runs on Java Virtual Machine (JVM) regardless of the underlying architecture.

Java is used in all kinds of applications like Mobile Applications (Android is Java-based), desktop applications, web applications, client-server applications, enterprise applications, and many more. When compared with C++, Java codes are generally more maintainable because Java does not allow many things which may lead to bad/inefficient programming if used incorrectly. For example, non-primitives are always references in Java. So we cannot pass large objects (like we can do in C++) to functions, we always pass references in Java. One more example, since there are no pointers, bad memory access is also not possible. When compared with Python, Java kind of fits between C++ and Python. The programs are written in Java typically run faster than corresponding Python programs and slower than C++. Like C++, Java does static type checking, but Python does not.

Measuring programming progress by lines of code is like measuring aircraft building progress by weight.
– Bill Gates

Java Programming Language Platforms

There are four platforms of the Java programming language:
1. Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE)
2. Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE)
3. Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME)
4. JavaFX

All Java platforms consist of a Java Virtual Machine (VM) and an application programming interface (API). The Java Virtual Machine is a program, for a particular hardware and software platform, that runs Java technology applications. An API is a collection of software components that you can use to create other software components or applications. Each Java platform provides a virtual machine and an API, and this allows applications written for that platform to run on any compatible system with all the advantages of the Java programming language: platform-independence, power, stability, ease-of-development, and security.