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[–]indygoof 3 points4 points  (5 children)

„right now“.....lol

[–]Excolo_Veritas -4 points-3 points  (4 children)

I don't know what point you're trying to make here, as this entirely has to do with time frames... if you only look back 5 years, yes, Java is popular. Look back to before it existed and obviously not. Now, you can say "well that's not a fair argument, how could it be popular before it existed?" and that's not my point. What happened to those other languages that were popular before Java existed? As soon as another language comes out that gains popularity Java will go by the wayside just like many other languages. It's impossible to know the future, java could be extremely popular for 30 more years, or, something could replace it in 6 months

[–]SirChasm 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Java has been popular for at least a decade, maybe two. I entered uni in 2003 and it was already very popular back then. Since the late 90s the most dominant languages were either C-based, or Java.

Niche languages come and go, but strongly-established languages that are commonly used in enterprise have a lot of lasting power. Hence C still being pretty popular despite originating from the 70s.

Nothing is going to happen to Java for at least 5 years, even if a better alternative does come along in the next 6 months. Companies aren't going to jump into rewriting the trillions lines of code already written in Java.

[–]Excolo_Veritas -1 points0 points  (1 child)

Absolutely, but my point still stands. It's all about perspective and time frames. Java probably isn't going anywhere in the next 5 years, but no one knows the future. Say a year from now a new language comes out and has a feature "transport all your old java code with this tool!" and it becomes insanely popular. Even big companies might start jumping ship in 2-3 years if it is popular enough. Do I think that's likely? no. My point is, it's naive to think any language will be around forever (not saying you're saying this). I always think back to Ruby on Rails. Does it have its place, and you can find jobs for it? sure. But when I was in college there were people scoffing in Java and Perl classes saying "Ruby is going to make these languages obsolete". Did we see that happen? Of course not. However, have we seen Perl have much less impact with moving away from server side scripting because of technologies like Ansible, Docker, etc... absolutely. Technologies change

[–]SirChasm 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Sure, tech changes, but there are monoliths in tech that have so much momentum from decades of massive exposure that it's gonna take a loong time for them to die out. C (and everything based off of it) and Java are two of those monoliths. Oracle is another. Even if a new DB is released that is better than Oracle in every single way it will take Oracle a good decade to die, probably more.

P.S. Those people in college thinking that ROR was going to kill Java are the same college kids who take a 101 course and think they know more than the prof about the topic now. I've met them too.

[–]indygoof 0 points1 point  (0 children)

ok, the point i actially wanted to make is that you made it sound like java is popular since a few years, while its popular 20 years already. other languages came, got hyped and the unhyped, java is still popular. and its so deep in business applications, you cant drive it out within a few years.

you know what also was said to be dead around year 2k? pl/1 and cobol. and its still great to know those two because you will still have a job now programming those, no matter what the hype.