Its syntax is very similar to that of C++. In effect C++ programmers can usually read and learn Java source code without much trouble. The language is of a slightly higher abstraction level than C++, but not so high that it like ML or Python rightly can be called a high level programming language. .
Besides being used for development of regular applications, Java run-time environments can also be embedded in applications, most noticeably World Wide Web browsers. These browsers can execute (client side) applications embedded in web pages. These applications are downloaded dynamically and automatically from the web page. Such embedded applications are called Java applets. Due to the high portability of Java byte code the programs can (usually) run without change no matter what machine the browser runs on. It is common knowledge that Java is useful for web-based games so applets will not be discussed in much detail in this report.
The Java standard library is a large collection of functionality that can be used for many common tasks, such as math, strings, common data structures, I/O, time/date handling, audio, multithreading, networking, serialization, graphical user interfaces, and cryptography. The API that interfaces the standard library from the Java programming language is usually termed the Java core API. One important part of the core API is the Java Native Interface (JNI). This allows Java applications to interact with C and C-like C++ code allowing them to extend to functionality of the standard library with system specific functionality. When people refer to 100% pure Java applications, they usually refer to Java applications that make use of the Java core API only. Extra Java libraries are allowed, but these may not use JNI. Besides the core API, Sun provides a number of optional packages that extends the core API in various ways. An optional package is simply a programming library.