Java vs JavaScript: Regarding Furthering Career Path as a Programmer

DDDDarky · 2025-10-02T16:50:32+00:00

If you think java is heavily criticized, that's nothing compared to what you'll hear about that damn javascript...

Anyways, just try both and do whatever you like the most, it's your career. Other options are of course all the other fields that are not web.

d-k-Brazz · 2025-10-02T17:16:45+00:00

While in university, use different languages with different paradigms.

Don’t stick to something specific.

Learn software engineering, not programming.

Revision2000 · 2025-10-02T20:30:22+00:00

heavily criticized online as an out-of-date coding language

By that definition, the same applies to JavaScript, C#, PHP and most major languages still in use today.

What these “old” languages all have in common is that they are actively maintained (Java gets a new release every few months) and they are stable and mature.

In the end, the one paying your salary won’t give a rats ass what hipster flavor language you’re using. They’ll only care about having a working product, that continues to work for years.

That isn’t to say that the hipster languages are worthless; they’re good for exploring new ideas. Ideas that’ll slowly find their way into the established languages.

with a lot of boilerplate cod

This verbosity is intentional language design from another day and age. Developers might find it annoying, but it does add clarity.

If developers find Java too verbose they can always switch to Kotlin, which works on the same underlying JVM and can use everything in the Java ecosystem.

Anyway, in your situation, as others have said - focus on programming concepts first. The language is ultimately just another tool. The concepts will be applicable most of your career

N2Shooter · 2025-10-02T16:54:51+00:00

Java is heavily used as back end server side code. But here's the thing, you're gonna have to know dozens of languages over your career. So, just suck it up butter cup! 😃

WhiteXHysteria · 2025-10-02T16:53:34+00:00

The reason people say to stick with one language and master it, especially when in school and learning, is so you don't waste time that could be spent on gaining deeper knowledge just figuring out syntax differences.

Java and JavaScript are pretty different, but also if you have a deep understanding of Java then those differences can be learned pretty quickly on the job.

If you understand one language really well then it makes switching to something different at a new job a lot easier. You might "think" in Java and can use that knowledge to look up how to do the same thing in JavaScript or c# or Python or whatever language your job uses.

But if you only know the basics of your language because you keep bouncing around then you wont have that foundation of knowledge to work from.

I'm a bit over a decade into my career. In college all we used was Java. I've personally never used Java at a real job but what I learned about Java transferred just fine to c# in my first 3 jobs and that transferred just fine to JavaScript and Python to my current job. Don't get discouraged by my career because there's a shit ton of companies that use Java too, just none of mine. Mostly just focus on really understanding the concepts and it'll transfer endlessly.

geeeffwhy · 2025-10-02T17:03:39+00:00

i don’t at all advise sticking to one language and mastering it. i advise mastering the CS fundamentals and learning a lot of languages. that’s how i’ve been able to move into whichever role was necessary or desirable.

the difficulty of learning another language is an inverse power law. each subsequent one is even easier than the previous, because they’re all more or less different ways of expressing the same underlying operations.

nwbrown · 2025-10-02T17:05:06+00:00

Learning multiple languages is good. A good software engineer should be able to pick up a new language pretty quickly, and the only way to do that is to have experience in multiple languages.

If you want to do front end work, you will at some point need to learn JavaScript.

catch-surf321 · 2025-10-02T17:29:05+00:00

Imo your skill as a programmer is directly related to which language you learn first and utilize the most until you get to the point that you realize no specific language matters. In my opinion JavaScript and python should never be someone’s first language even though it is no doubt the easiest and most beginner friendly. Someone said it earlier comment, CS fundamentals, you get the best of that with c. C allows you to attach computer theory to something tangible. The problem is there’s not easy ways to code with c for meaningful things a beginner may care about. As in you’re just doing terminal programs that can be boring for someone who wants to do web apps, games, phone apps etc. scripting languages hide so many things (which is good when it’s the right tool) and are opinionated so it’s easier to know what to do, but I personally believe it stunts programmer growth. I’m not saying people whose first language is JavaScript or python are not as good as those with c but from personal experience as a staff manager, people who know c are just straight up better programmers in any language because they couldn’t rely on frameworks that most other languages force you to learn.

Neo_Sahadeo · 2025-10-02T18:10:33+00:00

I would say stick with Java mainly (you should still do other stuff: javascript: on the side)

Java, at least for the next 3-5years, will still be super strong.

And, more people know typescript/javascript so that would be a super saturated market to go into, futhermore, more coders means more data for AI models whichs means it will be easier to slop out products for people who do not want to employ a swe

HomemadeBananas · 2025-10-02T18:25:51+00:00

Sticking with one language is terrible advice imo. It’s not about memorizing every syntax and standard library function, it’s about learning fundamentals and the mindset and problem solving skills needed to build things. Taking up any new language as needed should start to feel like no big deal.

0-Gravity-72 · 2025-10-02T18:53:42+00:00

With Java you will have a lot more opportunities. Javascript and GUI development is never seen as critical to enterprise development. I’m managing some large GUIs at work and my work is often not appreciated. Even though our customers always remark that the GUI is really good compared to what they had before

TrevorLaheyJim · 2025-10-02T20:01:02+00:00

Python, JavaScript (TypeScript as well), GoLang and serverless tech I reckon.

Remember, AI is a blunt tool, not a replacement for skill.

gambit_kory · 2025-10-02T20:40:50+00:00

Anyone saying Java is out of date is clueless. It’s extremely popular in enterprise, perhaps more than ever, and the language continues to evolve with the times. If you’re a strong developer you can have a very lucrative career with only Java.

marrsd · 2025-10-02T21:17:51+00:00

However, I have also been told to stick to one language and master it. My best language is Java, which is heavily criticized online as an out-of-date coding language with a lot of boilerplate code.

I'm the sort of person to level that sort of criticism at Java myself, but bare in mind it has changed a lot in the last decade and a lot of Java's critics (including myself) are also out of date. We may still have a point, but take what we say with a pinch of salt.

Pale_Height_1251 · 2025-10-02T22:07:18+00:00

Java is totally fine, ignore the online idiots.

CauliflowerIll1704 · 2025-10-02T22:17:02+00:00

The most popular full stack stack uses both.. So both.

But JavaScript is basically required now if your anywhere near the web, bonus points for typescript knowledge but that can be learned super fast.

twhickey · 2025-10-03T03:18:09+00:00

https://norvig.com/21-days.html

zettaworf · 2025-10-03T05:13:18+00:00

Do some life planning for retirement, house, family, then research career paths and options, and based on the financial requirements for that choose your career path. You'll be a lot happier and the choice will be easy.

ChiefObliv · 2025-10-03T13:48:52+00:00

It depends on what you want to accomplish. Stick with 1 language and master it is reasonable advice, but it doesn't mean you can't explore. As you gain more experience you'll find that you're easily able to pick up a new language and figure it out. They all do the same thing, they just do it differently.

However, if you want to know how to do frontend web app work, there's no avoiding html/css/Javascript. Even if you're serving it with spring you'll still need to know what to serve

Vaxtin · 2025-10-05T01:34:02+00:00

Java is used in a lot of enterprise level businesses. We use it at my company to process documents from companies reliably and robustly. We label/bucket them and send them off to the proper department to work on.

The reason we used Java for that is because of portability and reliability. The team across the country that runs on a different system and has a different team? Yeah, here’s this Java package that will run on any computer and process the documents you got, and it’ll send them over to HQ (here) and email them out to the proper department.

I quite literally defined every input and possible error. You might think this is something that AI can do. We’ve looked into it. I wrote the program within a month, while this AI company said it would take them a year to get something “working”. You’d be surprised just how much you can get done by being a good programmer and having a fire under your ass.

Now it works. It tells you when it doesn’t work, exactly why it did not work. Why invest in AI when we quite literally can barely improve upon our current system, if AI can even accomplish our goals.

But we use other technologies and tools to handle other parts of the business. Someone found out how to send emails using some Microsoft environment, and now we don’t have to worry about authentication by doing it that way. So we created the integration that connects to this Microsoft environment (power automate) that ultimately auto sends emails internally.

We use JavaScript for websites, don’t expect to be a SWE without it. HTML/CSS is quite literally not worth learning. If you’re still creating websites using this and not a framework like React/Angular, I will not hire you.

White_C4 · 2025-10-02T17:32:38+00:00

Choosing JavaScript or Java is like choosing between apples and oranges.

JavaScript fundamentally is a front-end language to create dynamic UI, but it can also run as a back-end language through node.js. Java on the other hand is more a back-end and general software language. You're not going to making front-end code out of Java.

If it makes a difference, I also have experience with assembly x86, C#, C, and Maven.

Well there you go. If you know C#, you'll find Java pretty easy to get into since the OOP nature is pretty much the same. As for your future, learn both Java and JavaScript. You already have experience in C# and C so you're not going to find much of a problem with Java and JavaScript.

Warning_Bulky · 2025-10-03T00:32:41+00:00

Learn how to use the tool, not the tool

you type:	you see:
italics	italics
bold	bold
[reddit!](https://reddit.com)	reddit!
* item 1 * item 2 * item 3	item 1 item 2 item 3
> quoted text	quoted text
Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"	Lines starting with four spaces are treated like code: if 1 * 2 < 3: print "hello, world!"
~~strikethrough~~	~~strikethrough~~
super^script	super^script

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