Java as a language

A Java program is structured in a specific and particular manner. Java is a language and therefore has grammar similar to a spoken language like English. The grammar of computer languages is usually much, much simpler than spoken languages but comes with the disadvantage of having stricter rules. Applying this structure or grammar to the language is what allows the computer to understand the program and what it is supposed to do.

The overall program has a structure, but it is also important to understand the purpose of part of that structure. By analogy, a textbook can be split into sections, chapters, paragraphs, sentences, and words (the structure), but it is also necessary to understand the overall meaning of the words, the sentences, and chapters to fully understand the content of the textbook. You can think of this as the semantics of the program.

New features

The new features and upgrades included in Java changed the face of the programming environment and gave a new definition to Object-Oriented Programming (OOP in short). But unlike its predecessors, Java needed to be bundled with standard functionality and be independent of the host platform.

• It is Simple & Portable: Memory Management using Pointers is not allowed.
• It is Object-Oriented.
• It is Independent of the host platform.
• It is Secured & Dynamic: Designed to execute code from remote sources securely.
• It contains language facilities and libraries for Networking.
• High Performance: With the use of JIT (Just-In-Time) compilers, Java achieves high performance through the use of byte-code that can be easily translated into native machine code.
• It is Robust: Java has its own strong memory management system. This helps to eliminate errors as it checks the code during compile and runtime.
• Java is Multithreaded: It supports multiple executions of threads (i.e., lightweight processes), including a set of synchronization primitives.

Java programming language itself has a relatively small number of keywords, but it has a large and complex programming landscape. It is a popular programming language for embedded system development, back end systems and APIs.

Programming is about solving problems using programming languages. Several problems lend themselves naturally to recursive solutions. In this path, you will learn what recursion means and how to implement recursion in Java programs.

Java finds use in several large and complex systems. Such systems often require high-performance which can’t be achieved using single threaded programs. Parallelism is the key in such situations. Parallelism is not just a blessing, but also comes with its own set of challenges. You’ll learn about constructs that Java provides for implementing parallel programs.

The nature of applications that we develop and use keeps changing with time. This means that the requirements for programming languages keep evolving. Every programming language must evolve to meet these changing requirements, or face being outdated.