Why Is Java Interesting?
A Simple Example
When it was introduced in late 1995, Java took the Internet by storm. Java 1.1, released in early 1997, nearly doubles the speed of the Java interpreter and includes many important new features. With the addition of APIs to support database access, remote objects, an object component model, internationalization, printing, encryption, digital signatures, and many other technologies, Java is now poised to take the rest of the programming world by storm. jablaykita
Despite all the hype surrounding Java and the new features of Java 1.1, it's important to remember that at its core, Java is just a programming language, like many others, and its APIs are just class libraries, like those of other languages. What is interesting about Java, and thus the source of much of the hype, is that it has a number of important features that make it ideally suited for programming in the heavily networked, heterogenous world of the late 1990s. The rest of this chapter describes those interesting features of Java and demonstrates some simple Java code. Chapter 4, What's New in Java 1.1 explores the new features that have been added to version 1.1 of the Java API. jablaykita