Java Reference
In-Depth Information
devices, smartwatches, automobile in-vehicle infotainment systems (for controlling the
radio, GPS, phone calls, thermostat, etc.) and more.
12
Android smartphones include the functionality of a mobile phone, Internet client (for
web browsing and Internet communication), MP3 player, gaming console, digital camera
and more. These handheld devices feature full-color
multitouch screens
which allow you to
control the device with
gestures
involving one touch or multiple simultaneous touches. You
can download apps directly onto your Android device through Google Play and other app
marketplaces. At the time of this writing, there were over one million apps in
Google Play
,
and the number is growing quickly.
13
We present an introduction to Android app development in our textbook,
Android How
to Program, Second Edition,
and in our professional book,
Android for Programmers: An App-
Driven Approach, Second Edition
. After you learn Java, you'll find it straightforward to begin
developing and running Android apps. You can place your apps on Google Play
(
play.google.com
), and if they're successful, you may even be able to launch a business. Just
remember—Facebook, Microsoft and Dell were all launched from college dorm rooms.
In this section, we comment briefly on several popular programming languages (Fig. 1.5).
In the next section, we introduce Java.
Programming
language
Description
Fortran
Fortran
(FORmula TRANslator) was developed by IBM Corporation in the mid-
1950s for scientific and engineering applications that require complex mathematical
computations. It's still widely used, and its latest versions support object-oriented
programming.
COBOL
COBOL (COmmon Business Oriented Language) was developed in the late 1950s
by computer manufacturers, the U.S. government and industrial computer users
based on a language developed by Grace Hopper, a U.S. Navy Rear Admiral and
computer scientist who also advocated for the international standardization of pro-
gramming languages. COBOL is still widely used for commercial applications that
require precise and efficient manipulation of large amounts of data. Its latest version
supports object-oriented programming.
Pascal
Research in the 1960s resulted in
structured programming
—a disciplined approach to
writing programs that are clearer, easier to test and debug and easier to modify than
large programs produced with previous techniques. One result of this research was
the development in 1971 of the Pascal programming language, which was designed
for teaching structured programming and was popular in college courses for several
decades.
Fig. 1.5
|
Some other programming languages. (Part 1 of 3.)
