Visual J# (pronounced "jay-

sharp Sharp or SHARP may refer to: Acronyms * SHARP (helmet ratings) (Safety Helmet Assessment and Rating Programme), a British motorcycle helmet safety rating scheme * Self Help Addiction Recovery Program, a charitable organisation founded in 19 ...

") is a discontinued implementation of the J#

programming language A programming language is a system of notation for writing computer programs. Most programming languages are text-based formal languages, but they may also be graphical. They are a kind of computer language. The description of a programming ...

that was a transitional language for programmers 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 ...

and

Visual J++ Visual J++ is Microsoft's discontinued implementation of Java. Syntax, 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 i ...

languages, so they could use their existing knowledge and applications with 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 ...

. It was introduced in 2002 and discontinued in 2007, with support for the final release of the product continuing until October 2017. J# worked with

Java bytecode In computing, Java bytecode is the bytecode-structured instruction set of the Java virtual machine (JVM), a virtual machine that enables a computer to run programs written in the Java programming language and several other programming languages, ...

as well as source so it could be used to transition applications that used third-party

libraries A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

even if their original

source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...

was unavailable. It was developed by the

Hyderabad Hyderabad ( ; , ) is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Telangana and the ''de jure'' capital of Andhra Pradesh. It occupies on the Deccan Plateau along the banks of the Musi River (India), Musi River, in the northern part ...

-based Microsoft India Development Center at HITEC City in India. The implementation of Java in

, MSJVM, did not pass

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...

's compliance tests leading to a lawsuit from Sun, Java's creator, and creation of J#. 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 with J++), i.e. their build of Oracle's OpenJDK, which Microsoft plans to support for at least 6 years, for LTS versions, i.e. to September 2027 for Java 17.

Fundamental differences between J# and Java

Java and J# use the same general syntax but there are non-Java conventions in J# to support the .NET environment. For example, to use .NET "properties" with a standard

JavaBean In computing based on the Java Platform, JavaBeans is a technology developed by Sun Microsystems and released in 1996, as part of JDK 1.1. The 'beans' of JavaBeans are classes that encapsulate one or more objects into a single standardized objec ...

class, it is necessary to prefix getter and setter methods with the

Javadoc Javadoc (originally cased JavaDoc) is a documentation generator created by Sun Microsystems for the Java language (now owned by Oracle Corporation) for generating API documentation in HTML format from Java source code. The HTML format is used for ...

-like annotation: /** @beanproperty */ …and change the corresponding private variable name to be different from the suffix of the getXxx/setXxx names. J# does not compile Java-language source code to Java bytecode (.class files), and does not support

Java applet Java applets were small applications written in the Java programming language, or another programming language that compiles to Java bytecode, and delivered to users in the form of Java bytecode. The user launched the Java applet from a ...

development or the ability to host applets directly in a

web browser A web browser is application software for accessing websites. When a user requests a web page from a particular website, the browser retrieves its files from a web server and then displays the page on the user's screen. Browsers are used on ...

, although it does provide a wrapper called Microsoft J# Browser Controls for hosting them as

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. ...

objects. Finally,

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) and raw native interface (RNI) are substituted with

P/Invoke Platform Invocation Services, commonly referred to as P/Invoke, is a feature of Common Language Infrastructure implementations, like Microsoft's Common Language Runtime, that enables managed code to call native code. Managed code, such as C# or ...

; J# does not support

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 ...

(RMI). ''

InfoWorld ''InfoWorld'' (abbreviated IW) is an information technology media business. Founded in 1978, it began as a monthly magazine. In 2007, it transitioned to a web-only publication. Its parent company today is International Data Group, and its siste ...

'' said: "J#'s interface to the .NET framework is solid, but not as seamless as C#. In particular, J# code cannot define new .NET attributes, events, value types, or delegates. J# can make use of these language constructs if they are defined in an assembly written in another language, but its inability to define new ones limits J#'s reach and interoperability compared to other .NET languages." Contrariwise, Microsoft documentation for Visual Studio 2005 details the definition of .NET delegates, events, and value types directly in J#.

History of J#

In January 2007, Microsoft announced: * That Microsoft would produce an updated version of Visual J# 2.0, including a

64-bit In computer architecture, 64-bit Integer (computer science), integers, memory addresses, or other Data (computing), data units are those that are 64 bits wide. Also, 64-bit central processing unit, CPUs and arithmetic logic unit, ALUs are those ...

redistributable Freely redistributable software (FRS) is software that anyone is free to redistribute. The term has been used to mean two types of free to redistribute software, distinguished by the legal modifiability and limitations on purpose of use of the sof ...

version, called J# 2.0 Second Edition to meet customer demand for 64-bit runtime support. Microsoft released Visual J# 2.0 Second Edition in May 2007. * Retirement of the J# language and Java Language Conversion Assistant from future versions of ''

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

''. The last version, shipping with Visual Studio 2005, was supported until 2015. * Calling J# code from .NET 4.0 code would fail unless vjsnativ.dll was pre-loaded. The download of Visual J# 2005 Express Edition is no longer available from Microsoft's website. Visual J# is out of support including the Visual J# 2.0 Redistributable Second Edition released in 2007, that was supported through to 2017 "(5 years mainstream and 5 years extended support) on EN-US locales."

References

External links

* * {{Authority control .NET programming languages 2002 software Java development tools Java programming language family Microsoft programming languages J# Discontinued Microsoft development tools

Fundamental differences between J# and Java

History of J#

See also

References

External links