Java – all you (not a programmer) have to know


Java is one of the most popular programming languages. We can assume that it is general purpose, multi platform technology. It was intended to 'write once, run anywhere', which means

What is Java

Java is one of the most popular programming languages. We can assume that it is a general purpose, multi-platform technology. It was intended to ‘write once, run anywhere’, which means that applications written in this language, will (should) work on all platforms.

And let’s leave a definition like this. There are all these terms like JDK, JRE, concurrent, object-oriented etc. but we will leave it for developers or to another article.

Where is Java in 2019

First I must admit, that it is hard to decide where is a programming language in comparison to others. A lot of statistics base on different factors and every chart show different data.

There are a couple of objective indexes, but I chose 1 which I think is the most relevant and shows data closest to the reality. It is a TIOBE index. If you are interested in how it is assembled, you can check it here. And of course it is not perfect, but one of the best I could find.

Java rating statistics
Source: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
Java rating statistics
Source: https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

Even though Java had its pick around 2015 / 2016 it still is highest rated language in the market. I think that it is quite surprising, according to the Javascript hype and its new libraries going out every minute, but as we can see, Java stands still and holding its position for a very long period of time.

Why use Java

  • It is one of the most popular languages – it’s easy to find developers who write in it
  • A lot of technical advantages, but I don’t want this post to be too technical, so let’s assume that it saves a lot of time for developers
  • It is platform independent
  • Very strong community – there is a huge amount of people writing in this language
  • A big number of open source projects – according to GitHut it is 2nd most popular language when it comes to the number of active repositories
  • Security – off course, the biggest vulnerability for a programming language is most often programmer, but when it comes to good coding, we can rely on Java itself
  • Multithreading – a big advantage, you can process multiple things in 1 time. Not saying it is easy, but designed well, can have a huge impact on performance
  • Libraries – it is supported by a number of additional libraries and some of them are extremely speeding up development

Who use Java

Let me just paste most popular companies, and there are lots and lots more.

Who use Java
Source: https://stackshare.io/java

Will Java die

According to the point about where this language is in 2019, I don’t think Java will die any time soon.
It supposed to be replaced with Scala – didn’t work.
Nodejs is doing very well these days – not really for projects which are developed longer than 2 years.
C# copied Java, got its place… and actually is staying stable in there.

Is Java a good choice

So to sum up – you can rely on this technology, it is a good choice to build your application. It has a lot of advantages, some disadvantages off course, but in a big picture, it is worth investing in development in this language.

Filip

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