>> instead of printf and class instead of struct. The programs we wrote those days routinely dumped core due to pointer arithmetic errors or ran out of memory due to leaks. Source code could barely be ported between different versions of Unix. Running the same binary on different processors and operating systems was crazy talk.Java changed all that. While platform-dependent, manually allocated, procedural C code will continue to be with us for the next 20 years at least, Java proved this was a choice, not a requirement. For the first time, we began writing real production code in a cross-platform, garbage-collected, object-oriented language; and we liked it ... millions of us. Languages that have come after Java, most notably C#, have had to clear the new higher bar for developer productivity that Java established.
James Gosling, Mike Sheridan, Patrick Naughton, and the other programmers on Sun’s Green Project did not invent most of the important technologies that Java brought into widespread use. Most of the key features they included in what was then known as Oak found its origins elsewhere:
- A base Object class from which all classes descend? Smalltalk.
- Strong static type-checking at compile time? Ada.
- Multiple interface, single implementation inheritance? Objective-C.
- Inline documentation? CWeb.
- Cross-platform virtual machine and byte code with just-in-time compilation? Smalltalk again, especially Sun’s Self dialect.
- Garbage collection? Lisp.
- Primitive types and control structures? C.
- Dual type system with non-object primitive types for performance? C++.
Read the entire article: http://www.javaworld.com/article/2925496/core-java/java-at-20-how-java-changed-programming-forever.html
