What can you expect from Java?

So you've been hanging around the Net for a while, maybe created a website or two, and you're looking to add something a little less static to your site. Or maybe you're just learning about programming. Or maybe you're an old hand at it and are looking to broaden your horizons. And you've heard about Java and are wondering what to expect from this buzziest of all buzzwords.

Java is a relatively new programming language with many features that anybody looking to write almost any kind of program will appreciate. Because Java is new, it's learned a lot from languages that were created before it was. Keeping a lot of the good stuff from yesteryear, but avoiding many of the complex traps and gotchas has made Java relatively simple to learn, yet powerful enough to tackle the most complex problems in computing. And offering these advantages uniformly across almost every major platform today.

But there's more; Java is one of the few languages to be fully object-oriented. This design of the language offers you all the advantages of this programming style but also makes it possible for Java to get rid of some of the things that have made object-oriented programming complex in the past (concepts like C++'s virtual methods and pointers are all handled internally, so they cannot bother you any more). And being a new language, Java takes advantage of all the latest techniques and technologies (offering some of the latest developments in programming in general as well as being well-suited to networking and database access).

And there is even more: Java grows every day. In fact, Java has grown in the time you've spent reading these words. Java not only grows (daily) to add linguistic functionality, but it also grows to extend its reach into more and more varied areas of computing. More than that, Java actually helps extend computing as we know it today into something more suited to deal with the problems we will face tomorrow.

In a few sentences, you may expect the following from Java:

• Simple enough to learn, whether you are just starting or are a seasoned developer
• Powerful enough to handle the most complex problems
• Versatile enough to be applied in almost every aspect of computing, ranging from basic calculation to database applications to networking to complete suites of programs and back again
• New enough to offer the latest computing technologies available
• Will grow with new technology and your needs
• And all of that across many different platforms and more being added every day