Do Java programs ever crash?

Question

I am a c++ programmer , I know little bit about java. I know that java programmers do not have to work with memory directly like C++. I also know that most crashes in C++ appliations are due to memory corruptions.

So can an application written in Java crash due to a memory related issue?

Thanks

Answer 1

Contrary to some other answers I’ll claim that Java programs will crash as often, or possibly even more often than C++ programs.

By “crash” most people understand that a program encounters an error that isn’t properly handled, causing the application to terminate. Well, this of course happens and has got nothing to do with the way Java treats memory.

This is a good thing. What makes C++ so dangerous, and Java comparatively safe, is the precisely the fact that Java will crash in cases where C++ will happily continue running, albeit doing very wrong and potentially dangerous things (such as writing to uninitialized memory, overflowing buffers, …). Java’s crashing (e.g. throwing exceptions) prevents worse damage. C++ applications, on the other hand (due to the failure to terminate on errors), may do damage to external data or the system. Or they may just deliver a wrong (but seemingly plausible) result.

It’s against these dangers that Java guards, not against crashes per se.