Page 48 - Introduction to Programming with Java: A Problem Solving Approach

14 Chapter 1 Introduction to Computers and Programming
Why Is the Bytecode Interpreter Program Called a “Java Virtual Machine”?
We’ll now explain the origin of the name “Java Virtual Machine.” For programs written with most program- ming languages, the CPU “machine” runs the program’s compiled code. For programs written in Java, the bytecode interpreter program runs the program’s compiled code. So with Java, the bytecode interpreter program acts like a CPU machine. But the bytecode interpreter is just a piece of software, not a piece of hardware like a real CPU. Thus, it’s a virtual machine. And that’s why Java designers decided to call the bytecode interpreter program a Java virtual machine.
1.7 Emergence of Java Home-Appliance Software
In the early 1990s, putting intelligence into home appliances was thought to be the next “hot” technology. Ex- amples of intelligent home appliances include coffee pots controlled by a computer and televisions controlled by an interactive programmable device. Anticipating a strong market for such items, Sun Microsystems in 1991 funded a team of researchers to work on the secretive “Green Project” whose mission was to develop software for intelligent home appliances.
An intelligent home appliance’s intelligence comes from its embedded processor chips and the software that runs on those processor chips. Appliance processor chips change often because engineers continually find ways to make them smaller, less expensive, and more powerful. To accommodate the frequent turnover of new chips, the software that runs on them should be extremely flexible.
Originally, Sun planned to uAsepCa􏰁􏰁gfor itsPhoDmFe-appEliancehsaoftnwacre,eburt it soon realized that C􏰁􏰁 wasn’t sufficiently portable. Rather than write C􏰁􏰁 software and fight C􏰁􏰁’s inherent portability problems, Sun decided to develop a whole new programming language for its home-appliance software.
Sun’s new language was originally named Oak (for the tree that was outside project leader James Gos- ling’s window), but it turned out that Oak was already being used as the name of another programming lan- guage. As the story goes, while a group of Sun employees was on break at a local coffee shop, they came up with the name “Java.” They liked the name “java” because of the significant role caffeine plays in the lives of software developers.☺
World Wide Web
When the market for intelligent home-appliance software proved to be less fertile than anticipated, Sun almost pulled the plug on its Java project during the prerelease development phase. Fortunately for Sun (and for all of today’s Java lovers), the World Wide Web exploded in popularity. Sun realized that the Web’s growth could fuel demand for a language like Java, so Sun decided to continue with its Java development efforts. Those efforts bore fruit when they presented Java’s first release at the May 1995 SunWorld Confer- ence. Soon thereafter, Netscape, the world’s most popular browser manufacturer at the time, announced its intention to use Java in its browser software. With support from Netscape, Java started with a bang and it’s been going strong ever since.
The Web relies on Web pages being downloaded and run on many different types of computers. To work in such a diverse environment, Web page software must be extremely portable. You’re probably thinking, Java to the rescue! Actually, that would be a bit of an exaggeration. The Web didn’t need rescuing—the Web was doing reasonably well even before Java came into the picture, thank you very much. But Java was able to add some much-needed functionality to plain old blah Web pages.