Java allows you to play online games, chat with people around the world, calculate your mortgage interest, and view images in 3D, just to name a few. It’s also integral to the intranet applications and other e-business solutions that are the foundation of corporate computing.

“Java” generally refers to a combination of three things: the Java programming language (a high-level, object-oriented programming language); the Java Virtual Machine (a high-performance virtual machine that executes bytecodes on a specific computing platform, typically abbreviated JVM); and the Java platform, a JVM running compiled Java bytecodes, usually calling on a set of standard libraries such as those provided by Java Standard Edition (SE) or Enterprise Edition (EE). Though coupled by design, the language does not imply the JVM, and vice versa.

One of Java’s more controversial aspects–widely accepted at the time of its release but increasingly criticized today–is its incomplete object-orientation. Specifically, Java primitives such as int, char, boolean, etc. are not objects, and require a completely different treatment from the developer: as int is not a class, you cannot subclass and declare new methods on it, cannot pass it to a method that expects a generic Object, and so on. The inclusion of primitives increases Java performance, but at the arguable expense of code clarity, as anyone who’s had to work with the so-called “wrapper classes” (Integer, Character, and Boolean) will attest. Java 5.0 introduces an “autoboxing” scheme to eliminate many uses of the wrapper classes, but in some ways it obscures what is really going on.

Many Java enterprise frameworks require the use of configuration files or deployment descriptors, typically written in XML, to specify functionality: what class handles a certain HTTP request, the order of steps to execute in a rule engine, etc. In effect, they have to go beyond the language to implement their functionality. Critics point out that this has the perverse effect of not only escaping Java’s compiler checks, but also that a developer can no longer determine how a program will operate just by looking at its source code. Java 5.0 adds annotations to the language, which allows the tagging of methods, fields, and classes with values that can then be inspected and operated on at runtime, usually through reflection. Many programmers like annotations because they simplify tasks that might otherwise be addressed by deployment descriptors or other means. But again, they can make it difficult to understand Java code, as the presence or absence of an annotation may affect how the code is executed, in ways that are in no way obvious from the annotation.

The Java language hits a specific point in the tradeoff between developer productivity and code performance: CPU cycles keep getting cheaper, developers largely don’t, so it is perhaps inevitable to accept another layer of abstraction between the developer and the execution of CPU opcodes, if it allows the developer to create better software faster. In fact, critics of Java’s productivity, such as Bruce Tate in Beyond Java, may simply be observing this trend continuing past Java to a new sweet spot that further trades performance for developer productivity.

Java is generally thought of in terms of three platforms: Standard Edition (SE), Enterprise Edition (EE), and Micro Edition (ME). Each describes the combination of a language version, a set of standard libraries, and a virtual machine (see below) to execute the code. EE is a superset of SE–any EE application can assume the existence of all of the SE libraries–and EE’s use of the language is identical to SE’s.

Because of the limitations of small devices like phones and set-top boxes, Java Micro Edition differs significantly from its siblings. It is not a subset of SE (as SE is of EE), as some of its libraries exist only in Micro Edition. Moreover, ME eliminates some language features, such as the float primitive and Float class, reflecting the computing limitations of the platforms it runs on. Requiring different tools than SE and EE, and with profound differences in devices that makes code portability far less realistic in the micro space, many Java developers see ME as utterly alien.

IJava is a general purpose programming language with a number of features that make the language well suited for use on the World Wide Web. Small Java applications are called Java applets and can be downloaded from a Web server and run on your computer by a Java-compatible Web browser, such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer.