The second revolution of the Internet is Java. It provides a completely new way to think about distributed computing

The past several years have seen an explosion in the usage of the Internet. This exponential growth has been mainly attributed to the advent of the World Wide Web at the European particle physics research laboratory CERN, and the graphical interface Mosaic, developed at the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications in Illinois.

Of course, the Internet had been around for some time before this, but it had always been the purview of the UNIX guru. The World Wide Web changed all of that. It took arcane commands and plain text screens, and turned them into a graphical, formatted document where pointing and clicking was the main navigational tool In many ways, it was the first revolution of the Internet, and it was able to bring the technology of the Internet and totally connected environments to a much wider audience.

The second revolution of the Internet is Java. Java provides a completely new way to think about distributed computing. Just as when desktop computers freed individuals from depending upon a single mainframe for everyday work, Java frees client computers on the Internet from the dependence upon host computers for the execution of dynamic content.

Up to now, everything presented in a Web page was completely static. It had all been developed beforehand. You were essentially bringing up the electronic version of a printed document. However, computers are about dynamic interaction, where the user receives immediate feedback, and the programs actually do things on their own. Java provides this functionality by allowing the execution of code that can be distributed across the Internet in a portable, robust, secure, high-performance environment.

Programming with Java covers three fundamental areas of Java: The Java layout and architecture The Java environment Programming in Java The Java architecture provides an overview of how Java works, and the basics of the underlying design. It is important to gain a good understanding of how Java implements its features in order to place Java in the right perspective.

While Java will be many things to many people, it is just as important to understand what it won't do. Understanding how Java works is important to implementing it effectively. You can do almost anything with Java, but remember that it has both strengths and weaknesses. The Java environment refers to the programs you can use to run Java Programs.

For the vast majority of users, this is what they think of when they think of Java. Java is an interpreted language, and therefore needs a run-time system on every computer on which the applications are going to be run. This run-time system, interpreter, can exist both inside other programs, such as I HotJaVA, Sun's own World Wide Web browser, Netscape, or stand-alone. By setting up and using these programs, individuals are able to execute Java programs that exist on Web pages, or are downloaded from an ftp site. Additionally, site administrators need to know how to serve Web content, along with how to set up the run-time environment on client computers. Of course, Java is a programming language, and the majority of this book covers it in this respect. The Java language is similar to C++, but is completely new, and optimised for object oriented, distributed, multithreaded computing.

This book covers the basics of programming in the Java language, including classes, multithreading, and the class libraries. The Java language and class libraries have undergone a great amount of change recently in the shift from Alpha to Beta releases. At the time of writing, the Java Development Kit is in its first Beta release, and this book covers programming Java based upon this release.

Although the Java language has been, except for minor changes, static since the Alpha releases, the Java class libraries have undergone significant change, especially in reference to the windowing toolkit. however, the Beta API is considered fixed, and will undergo only minor changes before general release. If you are just learning how to program in Java from C, or you are learning Java as a first language, this book provides you with the necessary instruction to get up and running.

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