What is Java?
This is an article I wrote for my Java class at The Iron Yard. It’s being published here with permission.
Writing Software in Java
To write a program is to “speak” in a language a computer can understand. We don’t actually “speak” to a computer, but we can write messages that it can understand. These words aren’t in a natural language, though. Instead, they’re in a programming language.
My class at The Iron Yard is primarily about the programming language Java. Java is just one of hundreds of programming languages, but it has the distinction of being the most popular.
To a fresh eye, programming languages often look like gibberish. For example:
int total = scores.stream().mapToInt(Scoreable::getScore).sum(); return total / scores.size();
This Java code could be translated into english as something like, “Calculate the average score from a set of scores.” This example is intended to illustrate a point: Java isn’t english.
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