Printable View
I've read that one of the reasons Java is so popular is that it's promoted as being platform independent. But wouldn't one just need to write one program for Windows, another for Mac, etc? It seems like Java has to do this anyway. I know I'm missing something here.
In many cases a java program will run on many computers without any changes needed.
Even after it's only been compiled?
Yes, that is all you need to do with a program to make it executable.
For convenience class files are usually packaged in a jar file.