Object Oriented

Object oriented programming has many features that appeal to scientists: clear representation of purpose, reusable tool kits, etc.Nichols et al. (1993). The speed issue, along with the intricacies in programming the C++ has slowed its acceptance into general use in the scientific community. Java has attempted to find some middle ground between the power of C++ and the ease of Fortran.

Java has followed most of C++ conventions (inheritances, public/private functions, etc.) but has broken away from C++ in some key areas that commonly cause programming bugs. Java's new features include

• automatic garbage collection: allocation and freeing of memory is done automatically, avoiding memory leakage problems.
• disallowing multiple inheritances: something that is sometimes useful, but more often causes headaches.
• removes (hides) pointers: referencing of arrays, even multi-dimensional arrays are done with Fortran style direct referencing, eliminating over-writing of memory, a common bug in C and C++ code that is difficult to track down.