A Brief Introduction to Java

One of the most used programming languages in the world

Photo by Emile Perron on Unsplash

Perhaps one of the most widely used and respected programming languages in the world is Java. It has a wide range of uses, including web, artificial intelligence, and database applications. Not only that, it is flexible as an object-oriented language that can be used on many different platforms such as windows and mac. Coming into college, I had some experience with Java, but it was really through my first year in university where I expanded my skills. Both my introductory and data structures and algorithms classes were taught in Java, allowing me to become familiar with the language. In this article, I hope to explain some of the most basic concepts for a complete beginner to help them get on their way to become at master at programming in Java!

First Program and Line of Code

To start from the very beginning, open an IDE of your choice, and create a file called Main.java. In the file, write these lines of code

public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hello World!");
  }
}

In Java, code must run within classes, and there must also be a main( ) method: this is where the code will be executed. In this case, we are leveraging the System…