HotSpot
HotSpot is the primary Java Virtual Machine (JVM) implementation developed by Oracle (formerly Sun Microsystems), serving as the default runtime environment for Java applications. It features a just-in-time (JIT) compiler that dynamically optimizes bytecode into native machine code during execution, improving performance through techniques like adaptive optimization and garbage collection. HotSpot is widely used to run Java, Scala, Kotlin, and other JVM-based languages on various operating systems.
Developers should learn and use HotSpot when building high-performance, cross-platform applications in Java or other JVM languages, as it provides robust memory management, security features, and runtime optimizations. It is essential for enterprise applications, server-side systems (e.g., web servers, microservices), and Android development (via ART, which evolved from HotSpot), where reliability and efficiency are critical.