There are hundreds of web-based game systems available on the Internet. Flash versions of classic arcade and popular role-playing games are now plying the game screens of your personal computer display. And mind you, these web-based game systems are created and developed by individuals who have devoted some of their time in studying different programming languages to come up with new and better versions of existing web-based game systems.

One of the popular programming languages used in creating and developing web-based game systems is the Java programming language. In fact, it is preferred by most online game developers than the Shockwave and C++ programming languages.

Java is an object-oriented programming language designed by James Gosling together with his colleagues at the Sun Microsystems (a computer-vending company that is famous in developing innovative technologies) in the early 1990s. One of Java's distinctions on other programming languages is that it is generally designed to be compiled to the conventional machine code or to be interpreted from a so-called source code (series of statements that are written in the form of human-readable computer-based programming language) at runtime. Java is compiled through a byte code and later run by a Java virtual machine.

As previously mentioned, most online game developers prefer Java programming language than Shockwave (preferably due to some of its obsolete features) and C++. You will notice that Java is somewhat related to C++ (Java's syntax is derived from the C and C++ programming languages) yet it has a simpler object model. In contrast, C++ was considered to have certain complexities and when used bears more errors that cannot be fixed immediately.

Aside from the aforementioned disadvantages of C++ as the main programming language for a web-based game system, it also lacks the capability of programming distribution. James Gosling and his Sun colleagues want to develop a system that could be used on different platforms, that is from personal computer systems to hand-held digital devices.

Java became operational on web-based applications in 1994. Gosling felt that the Internet would become interactive soon, thus it is the environment that will work perfectly for their programming language.

And they have proven it right. Java is one of the popular and well-used platforms not just on web-based game systems but on other Internet-based applications as well.

Suddenly, many online game developers realized the potential of Java programming language with regards to the creation of web-based game systems. Although Shockwave replaced Java as the well-known platform for web-based game systems, Java is still the popular choice among web-based game developers. Java's popularity increased with the Netscape's decision of using the programming language with their net browsers.