Java and a Typical Java Development Environment

Java and a Typical Java Development Environment

The microprocessor revolution’s most important contribution to date is that it made possible the development of personal computers. Microprocessors are having a profound impact in intelligent consumer-electronic devices. Recognizing this, Sun Microsystems in 1991 funded an internal corporate research project led by James Gosling, which resulted in a C++-based object-oriented programming language Sun called Java.

            A key goal of Java is to be able to write programs that will run on a great variety of computer systems and computer-control devices. This is sometimes called “write once, run anywhere.”

            The web exploded in popularity in 1993, and Sun saw the potential of using Java to add dynamic content, such as interactivity and animations, to web pages. Java garnered the attention of the business community because of the phenomenal interest in the web. Java is now used to develop large-scale enterprise applications, to enhance the functionality of web servers (the computers that provide the content we see in our web browsers), to provide applications for consumer devices (e.g., cell phones, smartphones, television set-top boxes and more) and for many other purposes. Sun Microsystems was acquired by Oracle in 2009. At the Java One 2010 conference, Oracle announced that 97% of enterprise desktops, three billion handsets, and 80 million television devices run Java. There are currently over 9 million Java developers, up from 4.5 million in 2005.10 Java is now the most widely used software development language in the world.

Java Class Libraries

You can create each class and method you need to form your Java programs. However, most Java programmers take advantage of the rich collections of existing classes and methods in the Java class libraries, which are also known as the Java APIs (Application Programming Interfaces).

Performance Tip 1.1

Using Java API classes and methods instead of writing your own versions can improve program

performance, because they’re carefully written to perform efficiently. This also shortens

program development time.

Portability Tip 1.1

Although it’s easier to write portable programs (i.e., programs that can run on many different

types of computers) in Java than in most other programming languages, differences

between compilers, JVMs and computers can make portability difficult to achieve. Simply

writing programs in Java does not guarantee portability.

Phase 1: Creating a Program 

Phase 1 consists of editing a file with an editor program, normally known simply as an editor You type a Java program (typically referred to as source code) using the editor, make any necessary corrections and save the program on a secondary storage device, such as your hard drive. A file name ending with the .java extension indicates that the file contains Java source code.

Two editors widely used on Linux systems are vi and emacs. On Windows, Notepad will suffice.Many freeware and shareware editors are also available online.

environments (IDEs) are available from many major software suppliers. IDEs provide tools that support the software development process, including editors for writing and editing programs and debuggers for locating logic errors—errors that cause programs to execute incorrectly. Popular IDEs include Eclipse and Net Beans.

Phase 2: Compiling a Java Program into Bytecodes

In Phase 2, you use the command javac (the Java compiler) to compile a program For example, to compile a program called Welcome.java, you’d type

javac Welcome.java

in the command window of your system (i.e., the Command Prompt in Windows, the shell prompt in Linux or the Terminal application in Mac OS X). If the program compiles, the compiler produces a .class file called Welcome .class that contains the compiled version of the program.

The Java compiler translates Java source code into bytecodes that represent the tasks to execute in the execution phase (Phase 5). Bytecodes are executed by the Java Virtual Machine (JVM)—a part of the JDK and the foundation of the Java platform. A virtual machine (VM) is a software application that simulates a computer but hides the underlying operating system and hardware from the programs that interact with it. If the same VM is implemented on many computer platforms, applications that it executes can be used on all those platforms. The JVM is one of the most widely used virtual machines. Microsoft’s .NET uses a similar virtual-machine architecture.

            Unlike machine language, which is dependent on specific computer hardware, bytecodes are platform independent—they do not depend on a particular hardware platform. So, Java’s bytecodes are portable—without recompiling the source code, the same bytecodes can execute on any platform containing a JVM that understands the version of Java in which the bytecodes were compiled. The JVM is invoked by the java command. For example, to execute a Java application called Welcome, you’d type the command into Memory:

In Phase 3, the JVM places the program in memory to execute it—this is known as loading (Fig. 1.8).The JVM’s class loader takes the .class files containing the program’s bytecodes and transfers them to primary memory. The class loader also loads any of the .class files provided by Java that your program uses. The .class files can be loaded from a disk on your system or over a network (e.g., your local college or company network, or the Internet).

Phase 4: Bytecode Verification

In Phase 4, as the classes are loaded, the bytecode verifier examines their bytecodes to ensure that they’re valid and do not violate Java’s security restrictions (Fig. 1.9). Java enforces strong security to make sure that Java programs arriving over the network do not damage your files or your system (as computer viruses and worms might).

Phase 5: Execution

In Phase 5, the JVM executes the program’s bytecodes, thus performing the actions specified by the program.

In early Java versions, the JVM was simply an interpreter for Java bytecodes. This caused most Java programs to execute slowly, because the JVM would interpret and execute one bytecode at a time. Some modern computer architectures can execute several instructions in parallel. Today’s JVMs typically execute bytecodes using a combination of interpretation and so-called just-in-time (JIT) compilation. In this process, the JVM analyzes the bytecodes as they’re interpreted, searching for hot spots— parts of the bytecodes that execute frequently. For these parts, a just-in-time (JIT) compiler— known as the Java HotSpot compiler—translates the bytecodes into the underlying computer’s machine language. When the JVM encounters these compiled parts again,

the faster machine-language code executes. Thus Java programs actually go through two compilation phases—one in which source code is translated into bytecodes (for portability across JVMs on different computer platforms) and a second in which, during execution, the bytecodes are translated into machine language for the actual computer on which the program executes.

Problems That May Occur at Execution Time

Programs might not work on the first try. Each of the preceding phases can fail because of various errors that we’ll discuss throughout this book. For example, an executing program might try to divide by zero (an illegal operation for whole-number arithmetic in Java).

This would cause the Java program to display an error message. If this occurred, you’d have to return to the edit phase, make the necessary corrections and proceed through the remaining phases again to determine that the corrections fixed the problem(s). [Note: Most programs in Java input or output data. When we say that a program displays a message, we normally mean that it displays that message on your computer’s screen. Messages and other data may be output to other devices, such as disks and hardcopy printers, or even to a network for transmission to other computers.]

Common Programming Error 1.1

Errors such as division by zero occur as a program runs, so they’re called runtime errors

or execution-time errors. Fatal runtime errors cause programs to terminate immediately

without having successfully performed their jobs. Nonfatal runtime errors allow programs

to run to completion, often producing incorrect results.