Welcome to the second tutorial. In the previous tutorial, I explained the history of Java briefly, how Java works and what can we use Java for. In this tutorial, I'll be
showing you the advantages and disadvantages of Java. The rest of the tutorial for this series can be found in this post, check it out if you’re interested in reading the rest of the series.
Advantages of Java
List of Java advantages:
- It's quite easy to learn.
- The typing of Java
- Object-Oriented-Programming (OOP)
- Plenty of powerful standards libraries
- platform-independent language
- Multithreading programming
- Resources availability
It's quite easy to learn Java
Java is quite an easy
language to learn as it has an English like syntax. A programming language
syntax is the structure and rules we need to follow when using a programming
language. Programming languages such as C++ and C have harder syntax than Java. Here's a simple "Hello World" program in Java.
Typing of Java
Java is also a strongly-typed
language, meaning that it requires datatype with for every variable declaration
that we make. For now, think datatype as the format for the data we want to
store. Now, as for variable, imagine it as a thing that could temporarily store
data for our program. Some might think specifying datatype is a waste of time,
or inefficient. Still, it helps us by making sure we didn't accidentally use
the variable for another datatype, which might result in unexpected input used.
Besides being
strongly-typed, Java is also a type-safe programming language. Type-safe means
the compiler would check for all of the types while compiling, and throw an
error(s) if you try to assign the wrong type to a variable. The benefits of
this are it gives us some security when writing a program that might grow to a program with several hundred or thousand lines of code.
Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)
Java support
Object-Oriented Programming or OOP, which is a very important programming
paradigm. In OOP, everything is treated as an object. This concept involves
reusing code and make use of modular programs. OOP also associate with concepts
like classes, inheritance, polymorphism, encapsulation, abstraction, etc. More explanation
will be provided in the upcoming article.
Plenty of standard libraries to be utilized
Java comes with plenty
of powerful libraries, and one noticeable library would be the Math Class,
which gives us the ability to perform mathematical calculations and
manipulation in Java without us stressing out how to implement the formula or
methodology. For example, square root, rounding, and even perform trigonometry
functions like cos, sin, tan.
Other than Math class
Java provides much more standard libraries such as for I/O, networking,
databases, server, and almost everything we needed. Therefore, we can do many
things with Java. All these standards libraries could help us save our time by allowing us not to reinvent the wheels when facing problems that have already been solved by peoples throughout the world.
Platform-independent language
Java has a really great feature where it let us write our software once, and the software
could be able to run on any platform available. It reduces the work needed
when the developers decided to change their platform to another one. The developer only needs to manage one code base, which decreases
the program complexity and easier maintenance and scaling. This feature, in turn, reduces
the cost required by the developer or company for software development and
maintenance process.
Multithreading programming
Java is one of the programming languages that
support multithreading. Multithreading is the capability of the program to
execute multiple tasks simultaneously. It utilizes available resources while maximizing the computer's performance when executing tasks. This topic is quite advanced, but I'll try
to make a tutorial on multithreading using Java.
Resource Availability
Since
Java has been around for quite some times now, and there're many training courses available
to learn Java on the internet. Most of the resources are free. You don't need
to spend a fortune to learn how to program in Java and most of the other
programming language. Take my blog as an example, my blog doesn't charge you anything when you visit it.
Disadvantages of Java
List of Disadvantages:
Performance
Since
Java is a high-level language, as well as other high-level languages there's some drawback's in performance due to the
compilation and abstraction of the virtual machine. Java also consumes a lot of
memory compared to other languages like C and C++. Beside that features like
garbage collector is a handy feature, but it could become a significant
problem to the performance if it somehow takes up a lot of the system CPU.
Misconfiguration
in caching could also lead to excess usage in memory and garbage collection. Although all of these problems could be prevented if the system is planned by skilful developers before starting the development phase.
The Feel and look of Java GUI
The
GUI (Graphical User Interface) application written in Java using Swing library
while using the default look has a different feel and look from the native
ones. The developer will need to design themselves if they want a better-looking
application. Swing is an old GUI library, but it's reliable, cross-platform and
has already been integrated into several popular IDE (Integrated Development
Environment) like NetBeans and Eclipse. Another library called JavaFX provides a
more modern-looking GUI, but the library currently isn't very complete yet. Choosing one of these will require you to do some more
additional research as every developer and projects have different requirements.
Every programming language has its strength and weaknesses, that's why choosing the right
language for a problem could make a difference in terms of cost and time. That's all for this article. I hope this article is useful to you. Remember to share it with your friends if it is. Next tutorial will be on how to setup Java and NetBearn so stay tuned.
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