The Java programming language was developed at Sun MicroSystems (which is
now a subsidiary of Oracle Corporation) and was released in 1995. The intent of the
language was for portability on the World Wide Web. It does not contain some of
the features of C++ (such as operator overloading and multiple inheritance, where
overloading and inheritance will be discussed in Chaps. 5 and 9), so it is an easier
language to learn. Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming methodology
that makes it more convenient to reuse software as will be discussed
further in Chaps. 2, 5, and 9. Although no prior programming experience is
necessary to learn Java in this text, programmers with experience in C or C++
will recognize a number of similarities between Java and these languages. Conversely,
programmers learning Java first will also notice a number of similarities
should they subsequently learn C or C++. The reason for this similarity between
these languages is that both Java and C++ are based on C.
