"Hello World!"

This is my first blog post and therefore I thought to post something very simple. I hope this would be useful to people who are new to Java programming.

Java is a very popular programming language and it is very interesting to know its past too. It evolved from a language named "Oak". Oak was developed by Sun Microsystems who also developed Java language. Currently Sun Microsystems is merged with Oracle Corporation. If you like you can read more about history from here. And an interesting timeline of evolution java language is available here.Before knowing how to do coding you must know what you want to do it. You must have Java installed in your machine. But if you have already checked in Oracle website there are many different downloads available. Don't get confused. Mainly there are two, as JRE (Java Runtime Environment) and JDK (Java Development Kit). Using JRE your system can only 'run' Java applications and applets (you'll read about applets in my later posts). As you want to do coding you need JDK. So you have to download JDK. No need to download JRE because it comes bundled with JDK.If you don't have JDK installed in your computer then you can download the latest version from here.

Windows users

1. Go to the place where JDK was downloaded. 
2. It is a good practice if you keep all the software installation files you download/have in a single place. Therefore, move the JDK into a specific folder (e.g. MySoftware folder) and double click on it.
3. This will start installation wizard. All you have to do is stick to the default settings and finish the installation by clicking "Next" button.
4. Now if you open Command Prompt (Start-->All Programs-->Accessories-->Command Prompt OR WindowsKey+R type cmd and OK) and type;

java -version

you will get which version of java you are using.

You can also type;

java

javac

and see the output in the cmd.