What is meant by Java being an architecture neutral language?



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 the Virtual Machine (JVM) on whichever platform it is being run on.

Thus when you write a piece of Java code in a particular platform and generated an executable code .class file. You can execute/run this .class file on any system the only condition is that the target system should have JVM (JRE) installed in it.

In short, Java compiler generates an architecture-neutral object file format, which makes the compiled code executable on many processors, with the presence of Java runtime system.


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