What is Java? Java Pros and Cons.

Java is a programming language that was first released by Sun Micro systems in 1995.  Since the first release Java is evolving day by day with great new features and one of the mostly used programming language. There is a daily growing number of Java Application and Websites. Java is considered as a fast, secure and reliable Programming language. Java is built basically on Object Oriented Programming principles. Like any programming language Java has its own Structure, Syntax rules and programming paradigm. Java is used almost everywhere from your computer to data centers, gaming consoles, mobile phones. We will see some basic Pros and Cons of Java.

Pros / Advantages Of Java

• Simple:- Java was designed to be easy to use, write, compile, debug, and learn than other programming languages. Java is much simpler than C++ because Java uses automatic memory allocation and garbage collection.
•  Object Oriented :- Java is all about Object oriented Programming which makes things easy to design and maintain.
•  Platform Independent :- From initial Java was designed to be Platform Independent. A code written on one platform can be easily ported to another platform.
•  Automatic Memory Management :- Java has a Garbage Collector which does automatic memory management. Which makes things litter easier while coding. 
•  Java has very large and standard class library. Which helps a lot in achieving profitability and ease of integration or selecting 3rd part library. Some well know standard interfaces are JDBC, JMS, JCE, JAI, I/O, JNDI etc.
•  Good Documentation and Big community:- Java has provided very good documentation and there is a big Java community and discussion channels where its easy to get help. 
• Security :-  Java was build with Security in mind so security features from Java are one of the advantages. Java Security API has most of the features required for security like Cryptography, Public key infrastructure, secure communication, authentication and access control. 
• Powerful development tools :- Java has powerful development tools like Eclipse SDK, Intellij IDEA and NetBeans which have debugging capability and offer integrated development environment.
• Multi threaded :- Java has a capability of multi threading which enables  a program to perform several tasks simultaneously within a program.

Cons / Disadvantages of Java

• Performance :- Java has significantly slower and more memory-consuming performance than natively compiled languages such as C or C++. The Garbage Collector is also slow in Java if a application is very big.
• GUI Look and Feel :- The look and feel of GUI application developed in Java is very different than native application.
• Bugs and Vulnerabilities  :- There are existence of some bug in Java library implementation e.g Swing and in JVM implementations. Also recently some vulnerabilities were discovered in Java Security API.

Application of Java  

As per Oracle, more than 3 billion device run java application. I will list some important application where Java is used more dominantly.

• Desktop GUI Application
• Embedded Systems
• Web Application
• Web and Application servers
• Mobile Applications including Android
• Enterprise Application
• Scientific Applications
• Middle-ware Applications