What can java do

[noagname]

I am using this really old java book that teaches the basics of java.

now my question is what can you do with java where can it take you?
how/can you use java outside of command prompt?
where do java games come into play?
The last question is applets, does any one every use them?


if you did not realize i am a total noob at java

 

[dighn]

You can do pretty much anything any other programming language can do. There are various GUI frameworks for building GUI applications, like Swing and the older SWT. It's used a lot for enterprise-level applications afaik (both backend and frontend). There are simple games made in Java, but due to its high level nature (virtual machine, garbage collection, isolated access from the hardware etc), you don't see something like Crysis made in Java Applets.. I haven't notice one in years, safe to say they are almost dead?

 

[noagname]

ok thanks for your help

 

[TheNewbie]

Like dighn said, you can do pretty much anything with Java. A little while back where performance was a big issue since computer were generally much weaker you wouldn't use Java as much as you do today since it would've slowed you down. These days computers are very strong, and a growing amount of applications are being developed with higher level languages such as Java or C# (which are usually much easier to develop in).
Games and operating systems for example are still affected too much by the performance penalty of using higher level languages thus they are still written in C and some assembly code.

 

[postmortemIA]

For learning how to make GUI apps with java, try NetBeans.


Applets aren't anything special.

 

[Gunslinger08]

The management tools for Oracle DB used to be written in Java (newest version I've dealt with is 9, I believe). Not sure if they still are. They were incredibly slow. I'm really not a fan of the VM. CLR performs way better than Java bytecode.

 

[rchiu]

Java is mostly for the business world because it will play nice with almost any operating system/environment. Like many ppl have said, it is a high level language and it is kinda slow, so most games are developed in lower level language.

The benefit of Java is not really what it can do, but it's object oriented way of programming. It is easier to design, code and manage with object oriented language, and that's another reason why business world use Java heavily.

 

[piasabird]

They are using Java to update databases on servers.

Java is also good at writing files in all kinds of formats. It can do a lot of different things. The main thing is it is very good at building class objects and handling object oriented problems. Object oriented programming is very difficult to get a handle on, but is is very powerful. You really have to take a class somewhere to understand how it works. Java is also good at handling collections.