The Java development environment in its version for Mac
Java has become one of the most popular development languages in the world, mainly due to its portability. You can create applications that, through a specific virtual machine for each operating system, can run on different platforms, whether Mac, Windows PC, Android... It's present on millions of devices around the world, including computers, smartphones, and TV sets.
The Java development environment for Mac
And this Java JDK 8 SE provides the development environment required by any developer to create applications based on Java. The latter offers us a series of services and tools that simplify the development of software. Amongst the latter, the following are considered as the most important ones:
- Javac: it's the Java compiler to turn the source code written by the developer into bytecode.
- Java: it's the interpreter and the program that takes care of executing the bytecode.
- Appletviewer: it's the viewer for applets that can be used instead of a web browser.
- Javadoc: it's a tool in charge of creating documentation in HTML format based on the Java source code and the comments made by the developer.
- Javap: it's a disassembler.
- Jar: the tool to work with JAR files.
What's the difference between JDK and JRE (Java Runtime Environment)
JRE is the runtime environment of this language. In other words, the virtual machine necessary to be able to run applications developed in Java and that offers us different versions for each operating system. In other words, the software necessary for any user to be able to run an app and doesn't contain any development tools.
On the contrary, JDK or Java Development Kit, as we mentioned above, is the pack of development tools that couldn't work without the JRE.
Requirements and additional information:
- Minimum operating system requirements: Mac OS X 10.8.3.
