What you don’t know about the Java platform

In What You May or May Not Know About Java,
Daniel Michalik introduces the main features of Java. Don’t worry, it’s a rundown
of what makes this successful platform tick, with no introductory OOP lessons.

The article outlines memory management by SNO, otherwise known as the
garbage collector. I’d add that reference counting really is outdated. The technique used finds live objects by following references from the
stack to the heap. The cleanup itself uses an adaptive scheme,
switching between stop-and-copy and mark-and-sweep.

The article does a nice job covering compilers that translate platform-independent bytecode
into code native to the platform. As usual, it also touches on
building graphical interfaces in Java.

(Added October 8, 2003) Tomáš Kouba — Java on AbcLinuxu and Java Speed Tests