In 1991,James Gosling invented a high-level, general-purpose, object-oriented andsecure programming language and called it OAK (after a tree in front of hiswindow). And four years later, in 1995, it was renamed after one of the GreaterSunda Islands: Java.

In general,one can differentiate between three editions of Java. First the JavaStandard Editions (JSE). That’s (as the name suggests) the very basicversion and its use case is creating programs for a desktop computer. Second, thereis the Java Enterprise Edition (JEE), which is used to create largerprograms that run on servers and can manage heavy traffic and more complextransitions. And third, we have the Java Micro Edition (JME). With thatone can develop applications for small devices such as set-top boxes, smartphones,and appliances.

When itcomes to the supported types of applications, we got four in the Java language.There are Standalone Applications that use GUI (Graphical UserInterface) components such as AWT, Swing and JavaFX. These contain elementslike buttons, lists, menus, scroll panels etc. Next are the EnterpriseApplications, which are distributed in nature. With JSP, Servlet, Springand Hibernate one can create the so-called Web Applications that run ona server. And if there is a need for cross-platform one has also the option todevelop Mobile Applications for smartphones.

But whatabout the popularity of Java? According to Oracle blogs, it’s used by about 9million developers and runs on some 7 billion devices all over the world. Andof course, there are some reasons for these impressive numbers. With its simplesyntax (similar to English) and clean code structure, Java is one of theeasiest to learn programming languages out there. As the community is verylarge one can find help through thousands of tutorials when needed. With Javadoc,the Java documentation generator, one can just generate API documentation inHTML from the Java source code. An added security manager is also a big plusfor the language. When it comes to versatility, Java code is one of the tops asit's converted to byte code by the compiler which can then be executed on anyplatform using the Java Virtual Machine. This circumstance also promisesgreat cross-platform usability and therefore it’s possible to code for web,mobile and desktop platforms. This is backed by a large number of differentIDEs such as Eclipse, NetBeans, IntelliJ IDEA and many others. Theseprovide a lot of facilities such as debugging, syntax highlighting, codecompletion automated refactoring and so on.

You see there are a lot of reasons to learn Java, as it’s still one of the mostrelevant programming languages out there and shows no sign of declining inpopularity.

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