What is 'Java'? Java is an object-oriented computer language
from Sun Microsystems. Compared to many other languages, such as
FORTRAN and LISP, Java is a relative newcomer on the scene. It
started out in 1995 as a simple C-like language whose main
advantages were automatic garbage collection and the ability to
bring web pages to life with applets. It is also platform-
independent, as programs run in a virtual machine on the
supported platform. That means, for example, that a program
written on a UNIX machine will run without modification on a
Windows PC. Early in the development of the World Wide Web, Sun
and Netscape announced that Java 1.0 would be included in
Netscape Navigator, the most popular web browser at the time. In
1997, Java 1.1 brought a more scaleable events model for the
programming of graphical user interfaces and the introduction of
inner classes. Java 1.2 and 1.3 saw the introduction of the
Collections framework, incremental improvements in Swing GUI
components, and the introduction of countl