''Write once, run anywhere'' (WORA), or sometimes ''Write once, run everywhere'' (WORE), was a 1995 slogan created by

Sun Microsystems Sun Microsystems, Inc., often known as Sun for short, was an American technology company that existed from 1982 to 2010 which developed and sold computers, computer components, software, and information technology services. Sun contributed sig ...

to illustrate the

cross-platform Within computing, cross-platform software (also called multi-platform software, platform-agnostic software, or platform-independent software) is computer software that is designed to work in several Computing platform, computing platforms. Some ...

benefits of the

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

programming language. Ideally, this meant that a Java program could be developed on any device, compiled into standard

bytecode Bytecode (also called portable code or p-code) is a form of instruction set designed for efficient execution by a software interpreter. Unlike human-readable source code, bytecodes are compact numeric codes, constants, and references (normal ...

, and be expected to run on any device equipped with a

Java virtual machine A Java virtual machine (JVM) is a virtual machine that enables a computer to run Java programs as well as programs written in other languages that are also compiled to Java bytecode. The JVM is detailed by a specification that formally descr ...

(JVM). The installation of a JVM or Java interpreter on chips, devices, or software packages became an industry standard practice. The catch is that since there are multiple JVM implementations, on top of a wide variety of different operating systems, there could be subtle differences in how a program executes on each JVM/OS combination, possibly requiring an application to be tested on each target platform. This gave rise to a joke among Java developers: ''Write once, debug everywhere''. In comparison, the

Squeak Squeak is an object-oriented, class-based, and reflective programming language. It was derived from Smalltalk-80 by a group that included some of Smalltalk-80's original developers, initially at Apple Computer, then at Walt Disney Imaginee ...

Smalltalk programming language and environment boasts of being truly ''write once, run anywhere'', because it runs bit-identical images across its wide portability base.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Write Once, Run Anywhere Software engineering folklore American advertising slogans Sun Microsystems Computer programming folklore Computing acronyms 1995 quotations Interoperability

See also

References