K12IT

Q: What do the following have in common?

• an island in Indonesia to the south of Borneo; one of the world's most densely populated regions 
• coffee: a beverage consisting of an infusion of ground coffee beans; "he ordered a cup of coffee" 
• a platform-independent object-oriented programming language

Correct... they're all 'Java'.

I can confidently explain the first two. It's the last one that I'll stumble over. And where is it? It's like Chuck Norris- it's EVERYWHERE. Seriously, as an IT professional i get asked that question quite a bit, based on the Java update pop-up bubble. And i honestly didn't have a 'simple' answer, or one that made sense to the people I interact with daily. I decided to look for an answer that was both intelligent and easy to understand.

Once I began to research Java I realized it is 'everywhere'. It's in web browsers, cell phones, home appliances, and the list goes on. I was pretty surprised at how much I DIDN'T know about this little.. what? is it software, is it a program, what exactly IS Java? Let's get started, kids...

Java is a programming 'language'. Its original claim to fame was that (at least in theory, and heavily promoted by marketing hype) you could write and compile the code once, and then run it anywhere there was a suitable environment (this is where “write once, run anywhere” comes from).

In the early days of the Web, one of the environments that Java could run in was an applet- think of a Flash movie, because Flash really filled that niche in the end. The idea was you could bundle up a chunk of Java written to a certain specification, the web browser would run it in a special secure environment, and this would let you have most of the power of a full programming language, but working in any browser.

(Meanwhile, Netscape had been experimenting with client-side scripting, and produced a language. In one of the more idiotic marketing moves ever made, they named it Javascript, even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with Java.)

Practically speaking, Java applets were a flop, because Java was only ever supported by Sun on three platforms—Solaris, Windows, and Linux—and even then, making sure the version of Java you had installed on your computer matched the version the website expected was always tricky.

Java did find a niche – it largely replaced C++ and COBOL languages for big corporate applications, the sort companies maintain a base of for in-house programmers. On the web, the interactive and multimedia aspects have been taken over by Flash, and the complex applications have been taken over by Javascript using AJAX techniques.

So, simply speaking, our friend Java is a 'programming language' that is simplistic enough to communicate on a multitude of platforms and devices, yet complex enough to function fairly efficiently with a large variety of hardware and software.

'How' it does this is my next project...