Over the course of the past twenty years I have learned many things relevant to this book while working in high-energy physics. As everyone in this field in the yearly to mid-90s, I was analyzing experimental data collected by particle colliders using the FORTRAN programming language. Then, gradually, I moved to C++ coding following the general trend at that time. I was not too satisfied with this transition: C++ looked overly complicated and C++ source codes were difficult to understand. With C++, we were significantly constrained by particular aspects of computer hardware and operating system (Linux and Unix) on which the source codes were compiled and linked against existing libraries. Thus, to bring the analysis environment outside the high-energy community to the Windows platform, used by most people, was almost impossible.

I began serious development of ideas that eventually led to the jHepWork Java analysis environment in 2004, when I was struck by the simplicity and by the power of the Java Analysis Studio (JAS) program developed at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (USA). One could run it even on the Windows platform, which was incredible for high-energy physics applications; We never really used Windows at that time, since high-energy physics community had wholly embraced Unix and Linux as the platform of choice, together with its build-in GNU C++ and FORTRAN compilers. More importantly, JAS running on Windows had exactly the same interface and functionality as for Unix and Linux! It was a few months after that I made the decision to focus on a simplified version of this Java framework which, I thought, should befit from Java scripting, will be simpler and more intuitive. Thus, it should be better suited for general public use. I have called it “jHepWork” (“j” means Java, “HEP” is the abbreviation for high-energy physics, and “work” means a sedentary lifestyle in front of a computer monitor).