Java Development Environment
Java was created by James Gosling of Sun Microsystems in 1991 as a programming tool for an interactive, handheld home-entertainment device
controller called *7 (StarSeven). Since its inception, Java has become a very popular programming language. We use the Java development environment to introduce object-oriented
programming and commercial software development.
Java is syntactically similar to C and C++ but is closer to being a pure OOP1 language and it is open-source.
We use DrJava, JCreator, and NetBeans as our IDEs for Java in our class,
however there are many IDEs available for Java.
Java may be downloaded for free at: java.com.
Click here for instructions on installing Java and NetBeans on
your home computer.
1Java is more purely object-oriented than similar languages, however not everything in Java is an object.
The following entities in Java are not objects:
- primitive data types
- references
- fields
- local variables and parameters
The primitive or built-in data types are defined as simple data types (non-objects) to reduce the overhead in working with them during "normal" program execution. However, sometimes Java requires an object (e.g. when working with collections). In those cases, a wrapper classes for the primitive data types (Byte, Short, Integer, Long, Float, Double, Character, and Boolean) is used; either explicitly by the programmer or implicitly via autoboxing.
There are some languages that are pure OOP (e.g. Smalltalk/Squeak/Pharo, Self, Erlang, and CLOS), and yes one of these is the language in which Scratch 1 was written. Do you remember which one?