Most Java programs spend their time working with objects on the JVM heap, using getter and setter methods to retrieve or change the data in those objects. A few programs, however, need to do something different. Perhaps they’re exchanging data with a program written in C. Or they need to manage large chunks of data without the risk of garbage collection pauses. Or maybe they need efficient random access to files. For all these programs, a java.nio.ByteBuffer is an alternative to traditional Java objects.