Java, is it worth learning today, especially with all the new emerging programming languages? I like to evaluate decisions like this by listing out the pros, and cons, comparing them.
People always ask me, what ID I use for Java
and I use IntelliJ which is developed by Jet Brains and I love their products. Java,
it's a high-level programming language developed in 1995 into one of the most
popular languages in the world. It's open-source, it runs on pretty much every
operating system that's used to build everything from Android apps to server
networks to video games. So Needless to say, it's a very powerful and merciful
language, so let's start with the pros.
Java embraces object-oriented programming. It
was basically a rebuild of C. However, with C, they basically took C and
slapped the ability to have classes on there. This made this syntax and just
the overall feel of using classes. Plus, kind of awkward Java was built from
the ground up with classes in mind. Everything is an object and it's just an
overall cleaner implementation.
So why is this a good thing? Well, it allows
developers to easily reuse objects and their programs. It helps just the
overall maintenance of your code.
The second thing is its platform independence.
There's a famous saying in Java writing. Once, run it anywhere. Java runs on
top of a virtual machine which is called Java virtual machine or JVM. So as
long as the JVM is installed on a machine, you can run Java code. So you can
write and run your code on a windows machine take that same code, run it on Mac
or Linux, and really technically you can just take the bytecode which is
compiled Java code and run that on the JVM running on any machine so you don't
even really need the original source code.
With Java, you also get automated memory
management. Now if you're coming from a language like Python, you're going be
like what's the big deal, but if you're like me. In your first language, was C++.
This is an amazing feature.
So,
what does this mean? Well, if your program is running, you might need extra
memory in a language like C. Once you're done using that memory, you need to
deallocate this pace back and forgetting to do this will cause memory leaks in
your program.
In a language like Java, once a chunk of code
is no longer referenced, there's something called a garbage collector that runs
and will automatically deallocate that for you.
So, the automated memory management just adds
an extra safety net and just let it upset you have to do it manually. Java has
built in support for multi-threading. This means that you can have multiple
threads running concurrently. A thread is just a unit of a process that can
perform an action and the fact that Java has this built into it and in my
opinion built into it very well. It just gives it a huge advantage over other
languages.
The
last Pro is that it's a very mature language. Java has survived for a few
decades now. It has a great community. It's backed by Oracle, and they've
really kept it up to date with features of competing languages like C Sharp and
Kotlin. It seems like when one of these languages come out with a new feature
and the next Java update, they've you know build something similar and the
Oracle website has some of the best documentation I've seen for a language,
frameworks and libraries have been very well tested, and it's a language that's
just probably going to be around for a long time.
All right? So those are the pros of learning
Java. Let's take a look at some of the cons.
The first con is that it's losing popularity
now, although it is such a widely used language, I do believe that its popularity
will start to decline slowly over the years. Now it's not something that's
going to happen overnight, but you know you still you have a lot of newer
languages that are coming out. Like Go and rust that are getting popularity.
Then you think of Android with solely using
Java and now they're moving away to start using Kotlin. Stackoverflow developer
survey from 2017 and 2020 we see in 2017 it was the third most popular language
2020. It was went down to 5th now although it is slightly higher like half a
percent. We see the other mainstream languages like JavaScript went up from 62%
to 67%. We see Python from 32 to 44%, so even though it went up by half a
percent, I do kind of see it kind of like, you know, reaching its peak, and I
feel like it's going to start declining over the years.
The next con is that it's a very verbose language,
meaning you have to write a lot of code to do a little for. Both languages are
meant to be very like declarative, and it's supposed to be very clear what
you're doing. But in my opinion, it makes the code a little bit cluttered and
actually harder to read, and it may not seem like a big deal to you know. Because
you're just typing a little bit more, but if you're writing Java code like all
day, every day, it can get quite tedious and honestly, a little bit obnoxious,
especially when you compare it to a language like Python.
Java is a slow language. Remember how I
mentioned Java runs on a virtual machine? Well, this layer of abstraction slows
things down. Virtual machines act as an operating system running on top of
another operating system, so there's a lot of overhead there, but further away this
software is from the hardware. The slower the performance, especially when you
compare two languages like C which is very close to the hardware.
Anything where you need real-time operations
like online gaming or like cars operating system. Java just isn't really
going to be a good choice for that. We also mentioned the garbage collector
well when that runs, your entire program suspends, then the garbage collector
runs, and then the program resumes. Now, this is only a fraction of a second.
Users really aren't going to notice it, but
again, if you're really looking for a speedy application take a slight
performance hit.
Conclusion
So with that being said, is Java still worth
learning today now you know? Obviously depends on what you're looking to get
into. But in general, I still think it's a really good language. There's still
a huge community behind it. Obviously, it's backed by a massive company like
Oracle, and obviously, Oracle isn't going anywhere anytime soon. I think it's
just a great language to pick up whether you're a beginner learning your first
language or just more experienced developer looking to add to your toolbox.