starting java

Introduction to Java
Java is an object-oriented language developed by Sun Microsystems in the early 1990s and released in 1995. Java combined many of the best ideas from Pascal, C and various other object-oriented languages.

Java's strengths:

* Good object-oriented model
* Cross-platform language
* Hard to make mistakes that cause a program to crash
* Large standard library of code you can use in your program
* Many non-standard libraries available for free
* Popular (easy to find other programmers to talk to)

Java's weaknesses:
* The virtual machine needs to be running alongside your application. This increases the amount of memory your program needs.
* Because the program runs on a virtual machine, it may be slightly slower than a natively compiled program.
* Because the standard code libraries are designed to be cross-platform, you cannot easily take full advantage of all features unique to a given platform.