What is a Computer Program?
A computer program is the set of instructions or “how to’s” that the processor uses in turning input into
output.
Computer programs included application programs or applications such as word processing, databases,
spreadsheets, and games. These applications are used to accomplish special tasks.
Computer programs include much more than applications. The programs that run the computer itself
are programs. Programs called drivers run peripheral devices such as printers and scanner. The
operating system (OS) is a program, too.
In reality, every program was not created by a computer, but by a person or group of people.
People can write programs using today’s computer languages that are almost like English. The languages
that are nearly human are called high-level languages.
The language that a computer understands (1s and 0s) is low-level language.
Special programs, called compilers, translate the high-level language into lower levels of language. What
you write as a programmer can be translated to 1s and 0s, and you don’t have to worry about doing the
translation from human language to computer language.
What is Java?
JAVA is a high-level programming language developed by Sun Microsystems. Java was
originally called OAK, designed for handheld devices, but was unsuccessful. In 1995 Sun
changed the name to Java and modified the language to take advantage of the rapidly increasing
World Wide Web.
Java is special among other computer languages because you can use it on different operating
systems, otherwise known as platforms. For example, you can write a Java program on a
Macintosh computer and use the same code on a Windows computer. This cross-platform
compatibility has made Java very popular in the age of the Internet.
Java is an object-oriented programming language. Object-oriented programming is a way of
writing programs with the common theme that the program is a collection of objects that work
together to perform the task at hand. Each object is a collection of data and methods that
manipulate the data to perform required tasks. You will learn more about object-oriented
programming as the course progresses.
You will be using a Java integrated development environment (IDE) called Dr Java to create
your programs.