This page contains an archived post to the Java Answers Forum made prior to February 25, 2002. If you wish to participate in discussions, please visit the new Artima Forums.

Message:

Why Bytecode

Posted by Eric Allan Lucas on June 16, 2000 at 2:38 PM

The JVM is a _Virtual_Machine_.
This means it is a (sort of) virtual microprocessor with it's
own (somewhat high level) instruction set.

The difference is that while your PC's pentium (I assume)
processor reads the 1's and 0's in your compiled c
program ("binarycode") as instructions for it's instruction
decoder, the JVM reads the Bytecodes in your compiled java
program for it's instruction decoder.
The benefit is that the JVM can be written to operate on
machines of different architecture so that while your
program on the pentium must be recomplied for the sparc,
the pentium JVM reads the same Bytecodes as the sparc JVM.

Hope this helps.

Eric

> what is difference between bytecode and binarycode, as both are in the form of 0 and 1. please explain me in detail. as i am confused that if both use 0 and 1 then what is the need of jvm.
> pl reply me
> sanjeev