Java (software platform)
set of several computer software products and specifications
Java is a set of computer software and specifications that provides a software platform for developing application software and deploying it in a cross-platform computing environment. Java is used in a wide variety of computing platforms from embedded devices and mobile phones to enterprise servers and supercomputers. Java applets, which are less common than standalone Java applications, were commonly run in secure, sandboxed environments to provide many features of native applications through being embedded in HTML pages.
Writing in the Java programming language is the main way to produce code that will be deployed as byte code in a Java virtual machine (JVM); byte code compilers are also available for other languages, including Ada, JavaScript, Kotlin (Google's preferred Android language), Python, and Ruby. In addition, several languages have been designed to run natively on the JVM, including Clojure, Groovy, and Scala. Java syntax borrows heavily from C and C++, but object-oriented features are modeled after Smalltalk and Objective-C. Java eschews certain low-level constructs such as pointers and has a very simple memory model where objects are allocated on the heap (while some implementations e.g. all currently supported by Oracle, may use escape analysis optimization to allocate on the stack instead) and all variables of object types are references. Memory management is handled through integrated automatic garbage collection performed by the JVM.
Latest version
The latest version is Java 26 released in March 2026.
The latest long-term support (LTS) version, Java 25 released in September 2025, it is one of a few LTS versions still supported, down to Java 8 LTS.
Oracle extended support for Java 6 ended in December 2018.
As an open source platform, Java has many distributors, including Amazon, IBM, Azul Systems, and AdoptOpenJDK. Distributions include Amazon Corretto, Zulu, AdoptOpenJDK, and Liberica.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Java (software platform)” is set of several computer software products and specifications. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Java, software and platform, not as a finished interpretation.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1713118. 1 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 2026, 2025 and 2018.
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This entry incorporates text from “Java (software platform)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.