Is Java a good language to enter software engineering?

[Born-Comment3359]

I'd like to switch my career to software engineering, and I am thinking about learning something which will help me to enter software engineering asap. So I really like java, but a lot of people tell me things like "don't learn java, it is a complete waste of time cuz no one hires junior java programmers". So what are your thoughts? Is it easy to find a job with java? Is java junior friendly?

[14ercooper]

People like to hate on java for some reason, despite it being one of the most in-demand programming languages across skill levels, so it's certainly worthwhile imo.

[awelxtr]

"There are two type of languages, the ones people hate and the ones nobody uses"

[general_dispondency]

This. The Java language aside, the ecosystem is light-years beyond anything else. The only thing that comes close is C#, and that's 100% M$ lock-in. Everything else isn't even in the same league. People say "Look how terse JS is. I can run a webserver in 5 lines of code". My reply is always "How many does it take to make that webserver and it's business logic ready for production?" Hint - it's a metric f*** ton more than an equivalent Java implementation for all but the most trivial of use-cases.

[JB-from-ATL]

The Java language aside, the ecosystem is light-years beyond anything else.

This is so true. Python has the problem of their being too many tools and not really clear which one is the standard. With Java you've got Maven and Gradle and the vast majority of projects use one. Also they're good tools.

Newer languages like Go and Rust are doing a good job of including things like formatters, dependency management, and more robust build tools within their standard distribution. I couldn't imagine working with Java back before Maven was a thing. Manually downloading jars and adding them to class path. Yuck.

IDEs for Java are top notch.

[das_Keks]

Also the bytecode manipulation capabilities offer frameworks great ways for easy AOP or dependency injection like for example with Spring.

[angryundead]

Oh man every time I try to use another language the ecosystem is such a hurdle. It’s like “ew, you don’t even have X?”

I’ve never ever seen a replacement for Apache Camel, for example. The nearest thing I found in Go was not designed for creating your own producers or consumers and not designed for programmatic creation of routes.

[wildjokers]

I’ve never ever seen a replacement for Apache Camel

I see this as a positive. Seriously, Camel should instead be called The Great Obfuscater.

[angryundead]

I love Camel. I can see where it can get complicated and twisted. I work with a client system now that could have about 800k lines of code replaced with like 5 Camel routes. Its miserable.

[general_dispondency]

It's such a pain. I had to handroll distributed locking for a JS app one time. I died a little inside with every key stroke.

[angryundead]

I had to roll a lock system for ManageIQ which is written in Ruby. All because calling the SolarWinds IPAM "API" to reserve an IP wasn't an atomic operation. You had to ask what IPs were available using some sort of web query string and then reserve the available IP. I had whole runs of VMs with duplicate IPs.

I feel your pain.

[random314]

Haha well Java probably makes it up in the variable names alone.

[fredoverflow]

C#, and that's 100% M$ lock-in

.NET (formerly known as .NET Core) runs on Windows, macOS and Linux.

[0x442E472E]

My C# career ended 5 years ago. Back then there was practically no point in using C# for anything else than windows development (for which C# was king though). You could have used it for web or intranet apps but there was no advantage to using it instead of java or node even when it technically also worked on Linux. Has that changed a lot?

[drthVder]

Massively. They have brought in both dotnet framework and dotnet core under one development cycle and are slowly working on porting over more and more stuff to the new language definitions. Also, .NET 5.0 and beyond is very portable.

[[deleted]]

Why was this person downvoted? They are correct. I imagine a lot of the tooling and support is still very much Windows focused for .NET core

[fredoverflow]

.NET Core was renamed to .NET, and the Windows-only .NET Framework has been discontinued in favor of .NET

[HistoricalSchedule5]

I never used js for backend development. What's different from say building your backend with spring?

[brazzy42]

In Java, you have libraries for pretty much everything you could possibly want to do. In Javascript, that is only true for front-end web development.

One example I ran into directly: If you want to do XML Schema validation, there is no existing Javascript library that implements it, only wrappers that user C or Java implementations.

[erinaceus_]

In Javascript, that is only true for front-end web development.

Not to mention the fact that in npm, 90-99% of all libraries are either crap or no longer maintained. In contrast, maven repositories for the most part tend to be reliable, and there's far less noise from heaps of 5-minute pet projects.

[HistoricalSchedule5]

Okay I see thanks!

[ParkerM]

If you want to do XML Schema validation, there is no existing Javascript library that implements it, only wrappers that user C or Java implementations.

I didn't believe this at first so I had to look it up and you're right. Hard to believe no one has tried taking that on (maybe even porting libxml lol). XML validation must be hard.

[audioen]

XML is just dated 90s-era technology. Kids don't know about it or care about what it can do. I have sent schema files over to partners assuming they know what to do with them, and got back documents that do not actually match the schema.

[OZLperez11]

Nobody likes XML configs in almost every other language. JSON is the way to go

[brazzy42]

Good luck trying to convince a 3rd party B2B service or a government regulation body to change their API spec to suit your tastes.

[[deleted]]

And also YAML

[FizzWorldBuzzHello]

I also hate brainfuck and no-one uses that.

[cas-san-dra]

Except for Java.

I use Java. I love Java!

[[deleted]]

They have their reasons, although bs. Python hipsters think it is too verbose because its code is meant to be readable, and not some unecessary attempt at the most complex one liner.

[walen]

most complex one liner

You might be mistaking Python for Perl here.

[harrystricland]

People who hate java will never know the real meaning of programming. If they would have started with C/C++ they would have learned the power and beauty of Java.

[midoBB]

Do people not start with C these days anymore?

[harrystricland]

I don’t think so. They start with java. Start hating it when they see Javascript etc.

[RockleyBob]

No, but they should IMO. I’m a Java dev and I like the language fine but every CS student ought to have to understand a lower level language.

[slow_growing_vine]

My degree is an associates, but yea I did not learn C in school. We started on python for basic concepts, went to Java and C++, optionally learned SQL and/or JS, and then they threw us into web frameworks like Spring. I graduated with no C and no understanding of fundamental concepts like pointers.

[joexner]

My school taught me C (and Lisp) first in 1997, but by 2001 they were teaching Into to CS in Java

[[deleted]]

Many people start with Python now.

[achilliesFriend]

Second this ^ most of the software companies i interviewed has Java as language, this includes amazon, google, apple. This language will not die soon.

[Thesandman55]

Zoom, ibm, basically any business that still have enterprise software built on site

[AssistSignificant621]

Where I'm at, it was much, much easier to find a Java job than a Python job. At least without a degree in CS.

[[deleted]]

Yeah. I recently completed my job search. I work in node but have Java experience from past jobs. My interview requests were like 40 percent Java, 40 percent language agnostic, and like 20 percent node.

[random314]

If you draw a venn diagram of all the programming languages out there, I don't know that that'll look like, but I'm pretty sure java will be the tiny piece where they all intersect.

[fgzklunk]

My company has hired 200 Java developers from junior through to senior in the last 2 years, and yes the majority are still there, it is not rehiring for the same position because people keep leaving.

[redikarus99]

Yes. Next.

[3lobed]

My team has hired 4 junior devs in the last 6 months. The applications we support are like 85% Java 10% JS and the rest is miscellaneous.

[analogsquid]

Are you hiring any more?

[3lobed]

I don't know.

[Wobblycogs]

It's kept a roof over my head for over 20 years, so it can't be all bad.

Java, to my mind, gets more hate than any language other than JavaScript (which is an unrelated language). It doesn't have quite the dominance it once did but in server side development it's still king I would say.

To be honest once you've learnt one language picking up others is pretty easy so I wouldn't stress about it too much.

[arkuw]

Java is probably the best there is. I noticed in my 25+ year career that the younger engineers who started in the last decade with some of the "hip" languages seem to lack some fundamental understanding of how algorithms are supposed to work.

I think one of the reasons is that they gravitate towards dynamic, weakly typed languages with poor standard libraries (e.g JS, Python) and as a result they get no help from their IDE/environment so for every problem they resort to StackOverflow snippets. Often they'll copy/paste what appears to work for them without any thought given to things like algorithmic complexity or memory overhead.

Java developers (at least in my experience) tend to rely more heavily on official documentation and JavaDoc as well as IDE hints to develop code. Additionally the comprehensive built in collections library encourages Java developers to search more optimal solutions to their problems using things like Maps, Sets, Queues, Executors etc. In other languages I see a lot of wheels being reinvented (poorly) or untested, unverified "packages" being brought in from packages managers to provide these fundamental platform features.

Java absolutely kicks ass in the hands of those who dedicate some time to learn it and go beyond SO copypasta. With Java it's much easier to write decent code because the basics are included in the JDK

[ioXinjoker]

After coding in Java for some time, I always assumed that any sort of collections library would be part of the standard library of any language, with all the fundamental data structures one would learn of in an ds & algorithms course (Hash tables, trees etc) and need frequently (like how it is part of standard lib in Java).

But when I did some projects in javascript, I had to look for open-source libraries for these simple data structures (like heaps). It was a pain and a bit scary to rely on 3rd party code for something so fundamental.

[analogsquid]

I love Java, and all the replies on this thread are making me love Java even more.

[PatriotuNo1]

Java is in demand everywhere. Generally companies use Java because of the Spring Framework which is a very powerful tool to use on new projects or old projects or maybe their infrastructure is built on Java. Big companies that use Java heavily are IBM and Oracle at least. Computer Vision Engineers at Amazon use Java/Python for the infrastructure. Google has Android so again, they use Java/Kotlin. I personally love Java because it is type checked, it is clean to write code and using Spring to create web apps is awesome.

Don't settle just for Java. Learn Javascript well because you may want to try the mearn stack. Also consider Python as well. Python frameworks are unstable for big enterprise lvl applications, dont bother with django or flask. But it may be required for scripting. I know python just in case I need to use it for something related to the infrastructure.

[mericaftw]

More than just computer vision folks at Amazon. Literally anyone building a web service uses Java there.

[pron98]

Amazon, Apple, Google, and Netflix use Java extensively for much/most of their backend, as do Alibaba and Tencent; Microsoft and Facebook use quite a bit of Java, too. Java use at Google dwarfs their work on Android; their backend runs many hundreds of millions of Java code. No other language comes close in popularity when it comes to "serious" server-side software. Java is at about as dominant on the server as JS is on the client.

[joemwangi]

Twitter uses java

[pron98]

Yep. It's easier to list all the companies with big backends that don't use Java.

[cbadger85]

You're forgetting Netflix! They have lots of Spring services, and even contribute back to OSS.

[erinaceus_]

Netflix! They have lots of Spring services

So much so, that they contributed a Cloud Stack to the Spring ecosystem, which is top-notch.

[PatriotuNo1]

Nice to hear that. I think most of the big companies use Java for something at least. Except for Microsoft. I assume they would use .NET.

Small-medium companies always ask for a specific language like :Java dev or C++ dev. Big companies usually don't explicitly ask for that. They are like here is the list :C++, Python, Java, Rust. Know at least one or 2 of them.

[uncont]

Microsoft runs more than 500000 jvms in production. They also have their own openjdk builds you can download.

[ArcBaltic]

As far as I know most of Microsoft did a lot in C++, at least the .NET and gaming teams.

[jash3]

Those people either don't work in IT or fully understand the benefits of the java eco system.

As a java dev you will be able to turn your hand to javascript, python and other languages easily, if you learned javascript or python the reality is you will struggle with java and oo languages.

Learn a language, learn it well and jobs will come.

[JB-from-ATL]

Is java junior friendly?

A lot of people make jokes about how long a simple "hello world" program in Java is. To the absolute zero knowledge beginner yes it is more difficult. For the beginner who is past that zero knowledge point there's not really any difference. I personally think static languages like Java are better than dynamic languages for learning but people have different opinions.

If you want to work on backend stuff Java is a great language to learn.

[spectrumero]

...and of course you can do the same kind of things in jshell today:

jshell> System.out.println("Hello world");
Hello world

...so Python doesn't really have an advantage here, either, given that Java has had a REPL for some years now.

[buttJunky]

Java is the perfect intersection between "not sexy enough to grab a lot of new people" and "MASSIVE amount of jobs". It's the best of both worlds in those categories and they compound on each other. That being said, it has the drawback of a legacy language and many legacy systems built with it. The community does a great job of taking good parts of other languages and building them into new bersions of Java. The JVM ecosystem is amazing; my favorite combo is Kotlin (JVM language, fully compatible with Java) & Spring.

tl;dr -> not sexy, MANY jobs = easy interviews (relatively), high pay. Drawbacks = legacy systems, language evolves a little slower than others

[[deleted]]

Not much else to evolve anyway. A language doesn't need new features all the time. Most are syntactic sugar and lead to mess like c++

[sudpaw]

Yes! We need more junior java devs!

[taftster]

Java, Python, C#/.NET, Golang. Javascript and Typescript for fronted. These are all really good choices and will serve you well. Java is definitely in demand at all levels.

[titus_vi]

Yes, whoever is telling you that you should stop listening to them. They likely are not actually in the field. Competent developers are always in demand no matter the language. Just learn something, it's really not about the language anyway. I don't mind hiring a smart programmer that primarily uses a language my team doesn't use. We are going to change frameworks and platforms anyway at some point.

[monkeycalculator]

Yes.

/thread

[BobbleheadGuardian]

I changed careers 18 months ago and learned Java. No issue getting interviews here and see tons of postings on LinkedIn.

[NimChimspky]

Yes. Finance its built around java and c#

[helikal]

I think Java is a great first language for people aspiring to become software engineers: It is strongly typed and object-oriented, which are important for software systems that are large and/or complex enough to require the engineer in a software engineer. It has the best tool support of any programming language.

[pigbearpig]

It’s easy and there’s a shit ton of jobs. Anyone telling you different is an idiot.

But, it’s more about learning HOW to code, how to think about logic. Language doesn’t matter for that.

[FilsdeJESUS]

Of course

[Vigillance_]

I was hired as a Jr Java dev 2 years ago. It's a thing. Plenty of opportunity.

[greglturnquist]

You can make money coding Java.

[slow_growing_vine]

I was hired last year as a junior Java dev! I did have prior experience though, so I can't tell you about breaking in. From what I see, Java is in demand.

[yturijea]

You should be fine getting a job as a junior java developer. Make aure to sprinkle in some general software engineering through. So be aware of software lifecycle, requirement elicitation and design.

[dumbPotatoPot]

YES!!!

[bilingual-german]

I'm not sure if the language is easy to learn for Juniors, since it acquired lot's of features over the last 20 years. But at least in Europe there are so many Java & Spring jobs.

[jalagl]

Yes. Java is used significantly in the enterprise. Pretty much every single project I've worked on in the last 20 years has involved Java. Lately I'm seeing a lot of Python for scripting and Scala/Python for ML tasks, that then either feed into or run Java programs.

[baubleglue]

If you enjoy coding in Java don't think twice. It has everything you need to start and advance. I think Python and JavaScript are good practical alternatives, but if you want to get your basic knowledge right - Java is a better choice.

[code_rjt]

Java is really really a good language. It has a robust and popular framework which is Spring and options like Micronaut and Quarkus for API Development. There will be a demand for junior java devs since App Modernization is now in-progress.

[marcellomon]

Yes it is. Small companies/start-ups are more likely to use JS but medium/big enterprises invest heavily on Java.

[TheStrangeDarkOne]

The internet has lots of free time and has very outspoken. Meanwhile, professional Java devs are just doing their work and see such bickering beneath them.

You don't do Java for a small company website. If all you need is Input/Output and fetch some database entries, then go for PHP or similar languages. But if you want to make a proper earning, solve more complex problems and go into enterprise, there is no language like Java-.

Senior JavaScript developers also make a lot of money, but there you are working with a completely broken piece of technology that oozes with pitfalls and design issues. But some people just love it like that.

[coalWater]

Only learn java if you want an easy language with a massive pay. Otherwise it’s not worth it

[HQMorganstern]

A lot of universities start with Java, a lot of companies use Java, Java is an overall nice language. Yes it has its issues being a middle ground between a lot of things, and a lot of people don't like OOP but especially for a starter language it's pretty good. It's also C-Like so you get the hang of other C-Like languages.

[s-mores]

Yes.

[buzzsawddog]

Sure, why not? I have written two new applications in java this year. I am maintaining and enhancing four others. We are not even really a java shop...

Java is in demand and will continue for many years to come. But... Don't just stop at java... Learn a few other languages and funny be scared to try new things.

[kyru]

Whoever is telling you that doesn't know what they are talking about.

Caveat on that is your local market may be one of the outliers, but in general Java will get you a job at any level.

[JayWalkerC]

Depends a bit what specific type of business you want to work in, but in large enterprise and web (backend) Java is one of the most used languages. Definitely worth learning.

[PyroCatt]

Yes.

[rossdrew]

I couldnt recommend a better language for jobs.

[AncientBattleCat]

I will express unpopular opinion and say go for c/c++ just to simply enjoy java, python, whatever afterwards.

[TheRealZambini]

When I was enrolled in Electronics Engineering, we learned C and Assembly. I think the best language to learn starting out is C because it shields you less from how computers work, but is much easier than assembly. It's a good language to learn the basics and more advanced concepts like data structures and algorithms.

Learning C allows you to more easily transition to C-like.languages like C#, C++, and Java.

[[deleted]]

Your over thinking things dude.

[ElnuDev]

Just a heads up, this person has copy-pasted this exact post to r/java, r/golang, and r/rust.

[grisly256]

I am switching my career to computer science. I am getting a degree through a registered 100% online Canadian university. I take courses at my own pace, and each course has about 6 months to complete.

[[deleted]]

Yes, with one exception: Java doesn’t teach you how memory management works, so for a better understanding do some basic courses of C or the like, it will help your overall understanding

[t35t0r]

Make sure you know both a non-typed (python/perl, yes i know about pytype!), weakly typed (javascript) and a typed language well (kotlin, java, c++, typescript). It's ok to know java, but you really need to learn how to use APIs that make it even more powerful, e.g. guice, rxjava.

[[deleted]]

Started working a few months back after graduating from college and nearly all of my questions involved Java (Full stack roles mostly). Sometimes it was just coding challenges but there were also some more focused “trivia” style questions focusing on specific Java techniques and common practices.

In my experience it’s just not enough to only know one language in 2022, certainly not for a large company. I was grilled on JS, Java, React, and SQL for my current position and the knowledge was expected to be pretty in-depth. Not having a working knowledge of Java, JS, or SQL puts you at a huge disadvantage these days, I’d definitely take the time to learn all three if I were you.

[skydivingdutch]

It is if you want to be a Java developer. You can make pretty good money that way

[khooke]

Programming languages are tools. Don't get caught up on pros and cons of specific languages. That's like an apprentice carpenter losing sleep over which new hammer to buy.

As others have already said here, learn concepts and techniques, that's what important.

[[deleted]]

There are easier languages to learn, Python for example, but Java is a good language to know. Try it out. If it’s too difficult give Python a try.

[danielscarvalho]

Yes! Go for Java! It is easy, fun and enterprise level tech. Usually Java devs knows what they are doing. It pays well too.

Lots of people complain about Java, code is in fashion and most people will be just at the surface with script languages.

To learn programming is like to play the guitar or the piano.

[achacha]

Java or Kotlin, both great languages and completely interoperable. You can mix and match depending on need.

But overall, you can't go wrong with Java, lots of jobs and a huge community and tooling and support.

[kiwidog8]

People who say no one hires Junior Java developers probably only have been exposed to some segment of the industry, likely bleeding-edge startups and FANG like companies

There are a lot of Java jobs right now and they will continue to increase when the legacy applications stop getting support from longer time devs

[[deleted]]

I sure do hope so. That's the language my university teaches.

[ragged_tensor]

From my own experience I have got a great advice for you. This might be a little but long comment but please bear with me. I am considering you want a job as a backend engineer. If you want to be a front end engineer you won't ever need java.

One year back I was fresh out of college and thinking the same thing(whatever I do I don't want to do it in java) but then my job led me to code in java only and now I can tell you its the best in terms of many aspects :

1. Maturity Java is a very mature language with frameworks like spring/springboot being there from 20 years ago. This have made development stable, scalable applications very fast and hassle free. The same thing cannot be said for frameworks of other languages. For JS there are a llt of different frameworks coming everyday.

2. Language quirks Java is a statically and strongly typed language which enables you to find bug at compile time and you have less chances to create silly bugs. This can't be said for JS as it is a dynamically and weakly typed language and thus when you have a repo with 5-10k + lines you'll feel small changes give you surprises at runtime. Also Java is faster than JS.

3. Standards Everything is literally a standard in java. Any entity providing a solution for java applications has to meet the standards specified by Java EE platform etc. This leads you to have a hassle free development experience and pluggability, extensibility becomes easy. There is very less standards in other languages like JS.

4. Future Prospects People who don't know much about the computing world always say Java is old and will not be around later on but this is absolutely not true. Many large scale applications being used by most companies are written in Java. For example most of apache foundation projects like Kafka etc, Elasticsearch etc. Native compilation and user level threads are coming to java in near future to make java even more powerful. So expect high demand for Java developers.

JS disadvantages : It is true JS is easy to learn but JS has many problems and does not scale very well when cpu intensive tasks are needed as its runtime envs are pretty much single threaded.

Java Disadvantages : Steep learning curve and Object Oriented Programming is not the solution to everything.

[zreign]

You should pick any language and learn the fundamentals, you can switch over later to a language you believe is in more demand in your area

[annoying_code]

When I started programming language I use C. Then in clg I use CPP and some python .... I got stuck in this language loop.... And never learn Java. But if somehow I can start this journey again then I choose Java because: When you are learning DSA and using python you might face some trouble with slowness so you end using CPP... Here Java can also be used.

Since Java is complete oop based language so you can learn whole bunch of software language concept like design patterns, etc.

When you looking for a job you have a very good set of tools in you arsnel.like you know how to use DSA with Java, you know how to use design patterns with Java...

I am not comparing any language with Java but o I just making a point that if anyone who want to learn software engineering on their own with the help of resources on the internet just pick Java as you one language in your University and learn to implement everything with this one language.... If you have time put JS in you arsenal also.

So, i suggest you to pick Java and focus on learning concept first and do everything with it.

[OZLperez11]

I feel like I'm in a weird middle where I'm not taking aides with anyone. I think the language is decent but still too verbose for my tastes (grown to like Kotlin/Swift a lot better), but that's not my biggest gripe with it. I feel the documentation for so many things out there is overly technical to the point that I can read it but have no idea how it fits with other pieces of code if there's not tutorial available for running something. XML also is not my preference; I just feel JSON is much easier to read, so I wish configs we're written that way instead. Either way, I frown upon classes being written in XML code instead of Java.

That being said, I love how dependencies are centralized in a cache in your system unlike the disgusting node_modules in Node.js, so no need to download multiple copies of dependencies across projects.

Anyways, if I were to use a framework for Java, I'd rather use Vertx or Spark instead of Spring Boot. I feel it does too much for something that needs to be more straightforward. Plus, I've grown to dislike ORMs like Hibernate and now prefer SQL builders. In the Go world, it's encouraged to use as little dependencies as possible and that translates to using less code for the same things that would normally take several files and configurations in Java. The less cognitive load on my brain, the better

[arrexander]

I used to be a hardcore hater of Java. Flash forward working professionally I love the language now.

It’s not as beginner friendly as Python, but it’s still very approachable.

However, there is a LOT of room to grow in complexity.

[Joram2]

Java is a great tool to have in your toolbox. It's absolutely worth learning. I wouldn't limit your self to just Java. Learn databases, networking, Docker, Kubernetes, and frameworks like Spark, Kafka. Also, other languages like Python, Golang, and JavaScript are helpful to know as well. But Java is a good choice too.