Java is an object oriented programming language. In Java, everything is an object. Java can be easily extended since it is based on the object model.
Java is platform independent. Unlike many other programming languages including C and C++, when Java is compiled, it is not compiled into platform specific machine, rather into platform independent byte code. This byte code is distributed over the web and interpreted by virtual machine(JVM) on whichever platform it is being run.
Java is simple. Java is designed to be easy to learn. If you
understand the basic concept of OOP Java would be easy to master.
Java is secure. With Java's secure feature it enables to develop virus-free,
tamper-free systems. Authentication techniques are based on public-key
encryption.
Java is architectural-neutral. Java
compiler generates an architecture-neutral object file format which makes the
compiled code to be executable on many processors, with the presence of Java
runtime system.
Java is portable. Being
architectural-neutral and having no implementation dependent aspects of the
specification makes Java portable. Compiler in Java is written in ANSI C with a
clean portability boundary which is a POSIX subset.
Java is robust. Java makes an effort to
eliminate error prone situations by emphasizing mainly on compile time error
checking and runtime checking.
Java is multithreaded. With Java's
multithreaded feature it is possible to write programs that can do many tasks
simultaneously. This design feature allows developers to construct smoothly
running interactive applications.
Java is interpreted. Java byte code is
translated on the fly to native machine instructions and is not stored
anywhere. The development process is more rapid and analytical since the
linking is an incremental and light weight process.
Java enables high performance. With the use of
Just-In-Time compilers, Java enables high performance.
Java is distributed. Java is designed for
the distributed environment of the internet.
Java is dynamic. Java is considered to be
more dynamic than C or C++ since it is designed to adapt to an evolving
environment. Java programs can carry extensive amount of run-time information
that can be used to verify and resolve accesses to objects on run-time.