A Beginner’s Guide to Java And Its Concepts

Today, change has become an important characteristic for every software industry. New technologies, tools, features are introduced to the world every day. The impact of these changes are most extensive and might increase the issues and warnings addressed by the developers or software engineers. Major things that every developer needs to take care are maintenance of code, reusability, security, portability, user-friendliness and integrity. Since the invention of the computer system, many programming languages and methods have been implemented and introduced. The ancient methodologies included various programming approaches like modular coding, top-down approach, bottom-up approach, and structured database programming. The motive behind these methods was to handle the complexity of reliable programs. These techniques got into the market and became very famous over the past two decades. What is Java Programming? With the advancement of programming languages, C came to existence. In the 1980s, it became the first most successful structured programming language to surpass all the ancient programming languages. C helped the developers to write complex programs in an easy way. However, with time the programs became larger and C failed to obtain the expected results like bug fix, easy maintenance and reusability. To overcome all these issues, object-oriented programming was introduced. OOP is an abbreviation used for Object-Oriented Programming. This language’s approach is to program and develop a software program by eliminating some pitfalls of conventional programming and errors. Object-Oriented Paradigm: The major motive of OOP is to remove the flaws encountered during the compile-time or the execution of a program. OOP considers data as the most important part that needs to be secured. Also, it allows developers to decompose a program into small entities called objects. An object is a combination of data and methods used to create a program. Some of the features of the object-oriented paradigm are: ● Data is emphasized rather than the procedure. ● Programs are divided into small entities known as objects. ● Methods of an operating data in which objects are tied together in DS (Data Structure). ● External programs or applications cannot access hidden data. ● Addition of a new method or data is easier. ● It follows a bottom-up approach in the program interface or design. Basics of OOP: Object-oriented is a term that is interpreted for a better understanding of some concepts that are being used extensively in programming. General concepts of OOP are mentioned below: Objects: In an object-oriented system there are few entities which work at the runtime of the program and these runtime entities are called objects. These objects are helpful in representing the places, person, bank account details, etc. When a program is executed, objects interact by sending messages to one another. The entire dataset and object code can construct a user-defined data type using the concept of “Class”. Classes: These are user-defined data types which are built-in types of a programming language. Example, mango, apple and banana are members of Class – Fruit. Now the representation of class can be given as: Fruit Mango* Where Mango is the object that belongs to Class- Fruit. Data Abstraction: Abstraction refers to a representation of features without any explanations and details. Classes use the abstraction concept to define the attributes such as weight, size, cost and methods which works/ operates on these attributes. Encapsulation: It protects the code and function details from the user by hiding its implementation inside the class. The user is allowed to access a restricted set of operations by implementing special functions known as methods. Private methods are one such example of Encapsulation. Encapsulation increases the data accessibility possibilities without any concerns about internal implementations. Inheritance: In this process, the child class inherits properties from the parent class. In Inheritance, the objects are created for various functions and are being called by the parent class. The concept of Inheritance provides an idea of “reusability” to its users which means that the programmers can add extra features to an existing class with any sort of modification. This can be done by creating or deriving a new class from the parent class. The new class can have the combined properties and features of both the classes. Polymorphism: Polymorphism means the ability to take more than one forms i.e. one operation can exhibit different behaviours in different times or instances. These behaviours depend upon the different types of data used in an operation or function. Polymorphism allows objects to use different internal structures to share a common external interface. Dynamic Binding: Binding refers to the connectivity between the procedure call and the code. Dynamic binding means that the code associated with a given procedure call is not known until the time of the call at runtime. Benefits of OOP: OOP offers several benefits to program designers as well as users. Following are some benefits of Java: ● With the use of inheritance, we can eliminate the redundant code and extend the usage of available classes. ● We can build programs through standard working modules that help in connecting. with one another. ● Principle of data hiding helps the programmer to build secure programs that cannot be invaded by code in other parts of the program. ● Creation of multiple objects can help the programmers in managing the classes and subclasses. ● Software complexity is easier to manage. ● Message passing techniques of OOP are easy. ● Object-oriented systems can be easily upgraded from small systems to large systems. Summary: Java is an object-oriented language that enables us to organize our program into logical units called objects. Also, provides us with the advantage of encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism.