For the past several months, the TIOBE Index (a much-consulted gauge of programming-language popularity) has hinted at Java’s slow-motion doom. “Since software is adopted by more and more domains nowadays, C (low level software development) and Java (high level software development) apparently don’t suffice any more,”
it declared in May. But Java is nowhere close to obsolescence, and those interested in a programming career should at least become knowledgeable in how it works. For those who are new to computer science, Java is an object-oriented, class-based language. Released more than two decades ago, it now runs on a wide variety of platforms, and is a key element in Google Android. In fact, Java’s popularity means those developers who specialize in the language can expect to pull down quite a bit, salary-wise. For example, a Java developer with five years of experience could earn up to $122,585 in Silicon Valley (and that’s before you factor in benefits and perks such as equity). In a city not considered a major tech hub, such as Kansas City, that same developer could still make $100,000 per year—and their dollars would stretch far further. (These numbers were obtained via the
Dice Salary Calculator.) Interested in learning Java?
Online-learning school Udemy offers a free tutorial for “complete beginners,” complete with 16 hours of video. If you want a broad overview of Java’s code conventions, Oracle hosts
extensive documentation on that front.
Then there’s Edureka, which walks through some coding concepts, including (but certainly not limited to) the ever-popular “Hello world!” snippet:
1 public class MyFirstJavaProgram {
2 public static void main(String[] args)
3 {
4 System.out.println("Hello World");
5 }}
One of the great things about “Hello world!” (in any language) is how it illuminates some of the language’s most basic concepts; in the case of Java, for example, you should understand the full meaning of
“class” and
“string” before progressing to more elaborate programming examples and ideas. For those with a better grasp on Java (i.e., intermediate-level programmers), heady tomes such as Joshua Bloch’s
“Effective Java” are a good (albeit more expensive) means of taking a deep dive into the intricacies of the language. Whether or not Java eventually fades into obscurity, it’s clear that the language is hugely popular right now—and given the number of systems it runs on, will likely remain in use for many years to come. When it comes to learning programming languages, you could do far worse.
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