Appendix A: Using non-Java code

A totally portable Java program has serious drawbacks: speed and the inability to
access platform-specific services. When you know the platform that you’re running
on, it’s possible to dramatically speed up certain operations by making them native
methods, which are functions that are written in another programming language
(currently, only C/C++ is supported). There are other ways that Java supports
non-Java code, including CORBA. This appendix gives you enough of an
introduction to these features that you should be able to create simple examples
that interface with non-Java code.