Visual J++ is

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

's discontinued implementation of

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's List ...

Syntax In linguistics, syntax () is the study of how words and morphemes combine to form larger units such as phrases and sentences. Central concerns of syntax include word order, grammatical relations, hierarchical sentence structure ( constituency) ...

, keywords, and grammatical conventions were the same as Java's. It was introduced in 1996 and discontinued in January 2004, replaced to a certain extent by J# and C#. The implementation, MSJVM, did not pass

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Sun for short) was an American technology company that sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services and created the Java programming language, the Solaris operating system, ZFS, the ...

' compliance tests leading to a lawsuit from Sun, Java's creator. Microsoft ceased such support for the MSJVM on December 31, 2007 (later Oracle bought Sun, and with it Java and its trademarks). Microsoft however, officially started distributing Java again in 2021 (though not bundled with Windows or its web browsers as before), i.e. their build of

Oracle An oracle is a person or agency considered to provide wise and insightful counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. As such, it is a form of divination. Description The word '' ...

OpenJDK OpenJDK (Open Java Development Kit) is a free and open-source implementation of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE). It is the result of an effort Sun Microsystems began in 2006. The implementation is licensed under the GPL-2.0-only wi ...

, which Microsoft plans to support for at least 6 years, for LTS versions, i.e. to September 2027 for Java 17.

J++ compared to Sun's Java implementation

While J++ conformed to the Java

language specification In computer programming, a programming language specification (or standard or definition) is a documentation artifact that defines a programming language so that users and implementors can agree on what programs in that language mean. Specificati ...

did not implement certain features of the official Sun Java implementation in its Visual J++ product line.

Remote Method Invocation In a distributed computing environment, distributed object communication realizes communication between distributed objects. The main role is to allow objects to access data and invoke methods on remote objects (objects residing in non-local memory ...

(Java RMI) and

Java Native Interface In software design, the Java Native Interface (JNI) is a foreign function interface programming framework that enables Java code running in a Java virtual machine (JVM) to call and be called by native applications (programs specific to a hardwa ...

(JNI) are such examples. In addition, J++ implemented other extensions that were not part of

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's Java implementation. The inclusion of

callback Callback may refer to: * Callback (comedy), a joke which refers to one previously told * Callback (computer programming), executable code that is passed as a parameter to other code * Callback (telecommunications), the telecommunications event tha ...

s and

delegate Delegate or delegates may refer to: * Delegate, New South Wales, a town in Australia * Delegate (CLI), a computer programming technique * Delegate (American politics), a representative in any of various political organizations * Delegate (United ...

s for

event handling In programming and software design, an event is an action or occurrence recognized by software, often originating asynchronously from the external environment, that may be handled by the software. Computer events can be generated or triggere ...

further contributed to defining J++ as a completely different language merely based on an already existing design concept. Furthermore, J++ applications did not conform to the same standardized method of accessing the underlying operating system functions as any other Java application under Sun's Java SDK. In

's implementation, an underlying

framework A framework is a generic term commonly referring to an essential supporting structure which other things are built on top of. Framework may refer to: Computing * Application framework, used to implement the structure of an application for an op ...

called

J/Direct J/Direct was a technology included in some versions of Microsoft Java Virtual Machine, which allowed direct calls into the Windows API. J/Direct was specific of Microsoft's Virtual Machine, in replacement of the standard Java Native Interface (JNI) ...

provided a base mechanism that allowed J++ applications to completely circumvent Java's class libraries and

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standa ...

in accessing the underlying operating system. Due to this short-cut around the original Java framework, J++ applications were more efficient in taking advantage of

Win32 The Windows API, informally WinAPI, is Microsoft's core set of application programming interfaces (APIs) available in the Microsoft Windows operating systems. The name Windows API collectively refers to several different platform implementations th ...

functions than Java applications. J++ applications using these features could not be run on Sun's Java SDK, but the

Kaffe Kaffe is a discontinued "clean room design" (reverse engineering) version of a Java Virtual Machine. It comes with a subset of the Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE), Java API, and tools needed to provide a Java runtime environment. Like m ...

project developed extensions which made it possible to run J++ applications with these features on their open sourced

JVM A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally describes ...

. However, these extensions (implemented by TransVirtual under Microsoft funding) were not widely used, and J++ applications still needed to be compiled on Visual J++ before being able to be run by Kaffe. Visual J++ supported

ActiveX ActiveX is a deprecated software framework created by Microsoft that adapts its earlier Component Object Model (COM) and Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technologies for content downloaded from a network, particularly from the World Wide Web. ...

The WFC

The Windows Foundation Classes (WFC) encapsulated the Microsoft

platform

and

DHTML Dynamic HTML, or DHTML, is a term which was used by some browser vendors to describe the combination of HTML, style sheets and client-side scripts (JavaScript, VBScript, or any other supported scripts) that enabled the creation of interactive ...

object models into a unified class library. WFC was primarily designed for creating

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inste ...

s for Java applications on Windows.

Sun's litigation against Microsoft

had originally licensed Java to

but later initiated litigation against Microsoft for trademark violation. Sun's trademark license for usage of the Java brand insists that all implementations be "compatible". Some observers have remarked that this incompatibility appears to have been a deliberate aim of Microsoft's, in an attempt to at least slow the advance of Sun's Java technology. The failure of the MSJVM to pass Sun's compliance tests was a large factor in the initial lawsuit. In 2004, this and all other outstanding Sun–Microsoft lawsuits were settled as part of a wide-ranging agreement between Sun and Microsoft. As provided in the settlement, Microsoft could not incorporate into J++ features that Sun introduced into Java in versions beyond the one J++ had (at that date) been mirrored from; it would be frozen at the feature set of Java version 1.1.4. This effectively killed J++, and ended further updates. Microsoft was also forced to agree to cease distribution of the MSJVM; it is no longer available for download. The terms of the settlement did, however, permit Microsoft to provide security support, allowing further updates to the MSJVM to fix security holes and any other problems relating to security threats. Microsoft ceased such support for the MSJVM on December 31, 2007. The technology of J++ was eventually recycled, surviving for a while as part of the

Microsoft .NET The Microsoft .NET strategy is a marketing plan that Microsoft followed in the early 2000s. Steve Ballmer described it as the company's "most ambitious undertaking since Internet Strategy Day in 1995". In support of this strategy, between 2000 and ...

platform and the J# programming language.

Visual J++ – the IDE

Visual J++ was also the name of the

Integrated Development Environment An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools a ...

(IDE) for J++ and provided many tools and utilities to help J++ programmers fully leverage the

. Visual J++ is no longer available for distribution, but it was part of the

Microsoft Visual Studio Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) from Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms such a ...

product line. Visual Studio 6.0 was the last release to include J++.

Visual J#

Visual J# ''(pronounced "Jay Sharp")'' is a

language whose syntax is close to Java, part of the

.NET Framework The .NET Framework (pronounced as "''dot net"'') is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until bein ...

. Visual J# is part of the Microsoft Visual Studio .NET product suite and is designed to help developers and programmers migrate from J++ (or Java) to the

. Microsoft later developed the C# ("C Sharp") language as the primary language for the .NET platform, which was in many ways influenced by Java; subsequently the .NET Framework shares many ideas in common with Java. Much like Java, C# is compiled to a type of bytecode (called CIL), and runs on top of a virtual machine called the

Common Language Runtime The Common Language Runtime (CLR), the virtual machine component of Microsoft .NET Framework, manages the execution of .NET programs. Just-in-time compilation converts the managed code (compiled intermediate language code) into machine instructio ...

in .NET. Visual Studio 2005 was the last release to include J#.

References

External links

Product Features in Visual J++ – By Edition

Microsoft Visual J#

Microsoft Java Web Site

Sun's Agreement with Microsoft
{{Microsoft development tools Discontinued Microsoft development tools J++