Bytecode is a software object code that needs a virtual machine to interpret it. It allows for platform independence in software development, and developers can write once and use everywhere. The virtual machine converts bytecode to machine code, which is hidden from developers.
Bytecode is a software computer object code that can only be interpreted by a software program, usually described as a virtual machine. In many modern software development platforms, bytecode is preferred over low-level machine code because it inserts an interpreter between the software program and the computer hardware. Machine code is platform dependent and requires compilation on each hardware platform to run correctly on that specific platform.
As software development paradigms have matured over time, so has the use of external layers of interpretation between a computer’s hardware and the software that runs on the computer. In the early days of creating software, developers depended on computer hardware, drivers, and underlying operating systems. This dependency has forced developers to intimately understand many aspects of specific computers, which has made platform independence very difficult and software growth tightly tied to specific hardware and software vendors.
The creation of bytecode created an environment of platform independence in the software development community. With the use of this metaphor, software developers can write once and use everywhere. Developers are not required to understand the native drivers of a specific computer, nor are they interested in the underlying operating system on which the software will run.
A virtual machine is the term used in the Java programming language to represent the software program that will interpret the bytecode. This virtual machine will convert the bytecode as needed to interact with the underlying hardware and operating system inside the computer. The machine code generated by the virtual machine is hidden from the developer of the Java software program and can fully function across multiple platforms without requiring a rewrite of the software application for each platform.
Bytecode internals are more of an advanced topic and are generally not necessary for most developers to understand. Bytecode is not a human-readable language and consists of numeric encoded representations of classes, methods, and object scope and their nesting within classes. Each bytecode opcode is a single byte long.
The machine language required for modern computers to run on commands is proprietary in nature to the vendor. Each hardware and operating system has a unique way of managing processes, memory allocation and task usage. Using a bytecode software development application, the virtual machine interpreter is responsible for creating the machine code that will need to run on the proprietary platform.
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