如何理解 Java 的跨平台特性？

Java 的官方文档是有这样几句话：

“In the Java programming language, all source codes are written firstly in plain text files ending with a .java extension. The source codes are then compiled into .class files by the javac complier. The .class files contain bytecodes, which is the machine language of Java Virtual Machine.”

在一本 Java 英语教程上看到这样一句话：

“Java is platform independent, meaning that you can write a program once and run it anywhere.”