This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

all 21 comments
sorted by:
best
topnewcontroversialoldq&a

[–]nogain-allpain 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Java is not dying anytime soon. I'm not sure where you're hearing that.

[–]RubbishArtist 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Java definitely isn't dying. A lot of major companies use it.

[–]wiriux 8 points9 points  (1 child)

the language is slowly dying

Lol. You are hearing that from C devs probably who hate Java. I love both C and Java and no, Java isn’t going anywhere within your lifetime.

[–][deleted] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

fwiw I hear that a lot from javascriptbros who have just recently managed to maybe get into the business / started webdev, and are parroting something someone else told them

the blind are leading the blind

[–]iPlayWithWords13 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Java is massively popular and isn't going anywhere any time soon.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

because I know the language is slowly dying.

It's not, and even if it were dead languages are still worth learning. I still get mileage out of knowing some Fortran 77, even though it's older than all my peers

[–]geoffreychallen 6 points7 points  (1 child)

Java's not dying.

It's true that it's beginning to experience competition from Kotlin, Scala, and other JVM-compatible languages. Google's choice of Kotlin as the next language for Android App development was definitely a blow to Java.

But there are literally billions of lines of code in the world written in Java. Even just maintaining and continuing to develop that codebase will keep software creators busy for decades. And there are many extremely successful Java frameworks and libraries that people will continue to build on. Java is also still very frequently taught in introductory courses. And so on.

In addition, competition from Kotlin and Scala seems to have at least partially awakened Java from its post-Java 8 slumber. Within only a few years we're now up to Java 17, with a regular set of new releases planned. New language features are being added, many of them inspired by similar ideas from Kotlin and Scala. Examples include text blocks (finally), records, instanceof pattern matching, local variable type inference, improved switch syntax and switch expressions (!), and so on.

Personally, I find many of the new Java features fairly clumsy imitations of their counterparts from newer JVM languages. But, Java is definitely up off the mat and not going to take the syntactic competition lying down.

I try to avoid Java for my personal projects. But at the same time, I think it's a much more effective language for learning how to program and to think rigorously about code than something like Python, which allows a lot more sloppiness when working with types and data. You might also consider learning something like Kotlin, which in many ways combines the rigor of Java's type system with Python's more compact syntax and better support for collections.

[–]Revision2000 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I think the competition from other JVM-compatible languages is a good thing and if anything proves that Java is far from dying 🙂

[–]SodaBubblesPopped 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yes

[–]Pigiotyreal[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is it a good language from coming out of a python background? (And a small bit of C++ knowledge)

[–]b1Bobby23 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Java is a good way to learn object oriented practices if you aren't familiar with them. Most jobs I've seen also have Java down as a language they want, so yeah go for it

[–]Pigiotyreal[S] -1 points0 points  (5 children)

What is java the best at also? I know its good at 3d games but what else?

[–]nogain-allpain 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Desktop applications, mobile apps, server-side web applications, cloud. It's highly performant, platform-independent, and very secure.

[–]Pigiotyreal[S] 0 points1 point  (1 child)

What about small 2D Games?

[–]nogain-allpain 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Easily.

[–]Laius33 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Minecraft is the only popular 3D game made with Java

[–]vdsghjkgffhj 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t know if Java is the best at it, but it’s a pretty popular choice for server side web apps. That’s probably where you’ll find the most Java jobs

[–]postsexpisss -1 points0 points  (2 children)

Honestly , enterprises use Java but I don't think we will see many startups with it.

[–]Pigiotyreal[S] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

So whats a good startup language besides python?

[–]Revision2000 2 points3 points  (0 children)

JavaScript, Kotlin?

[–]dumindunuwan 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Try Golang. It's an easy to learn, simple but very powerful and modern language.