Java is one of the most well known and widely used programming language and platform. A platform is an environment that helps develop and run programs that are written in any programming language.

Java is fast, reliable and secure. From desktop to web applications, scientific supercomputers to gaming consoles, Java is used in every nook and corner.

But, to become proficient in any programming language, you first need to understand the basics of that language.

Below are the basics of Java that will help you the most to get a head start.

1. Java Environment: The programming environment of Java is consists of three components, mainly:

• Java Development Kit (JDK)
• Java Runtime Environment(JRE)
• Java virtual machine(JVM)

2. Java Basic Syntax: Each programming language has its own set of rules to declare, define and work on its components. Reading and learning about all of them together is not that simple.

3. Comments in Java: In a program, comments take part in making the program become readable to humans by placing the details of code involved and proper use of comments makes maintenance easier and finding bugs faster. Comments are ignored by the compiler when compiling the code. 

4. Data Types in Java: Every variable in Java has an associated data type. Each data type needs different amounts of memory and has some specific operations which can be performed over it.

5. Variables in Java: A variable is the given name to a memory location. It is the basic unit of storage in a program.

6. Keywords in Java: Keywords or Reserved words are the words in a language that are used for some internal process or represent some predefined actions. Therefore, these words are not allowed to be used as a variable name or object. Doing this will lead to a compile-time error.

7. Operators in Java: Operators are the foundation of any programming language. Therefore, the functionality of Java programming language is incomplete without the use of operators. We can define operators as symbols that help us perform specific mathematical and logic computations on operands. In other words, an operator operated the operands.

8. Decision Making (Control Statements) in Java: Decision Making in programming is the same to decision making in real life. In programming we face some circumstances where we want a specific block of code to be executed when some condition is fulfilled.

A programming language make use of control statements to control the flow of execution of the program based on specific conditions. These are used to cause the flow of execution to advance and branch based on changes to the state of a program.

9. Loops in Java: Looping in programming language is a feature that facilitates the execution of a set of instructions/functions repeatedly while some condition evaluates to true.

Java provides 3 ways for executing the loops. While all the ways provide similar functionality, they differ in their syntax and condition checking time.