andyJava is an object-oriented programming language that has been in existence for more than 25 years, with its release in 1995 being the peak of the once glorious Sun Microsystems.
After a quarter of a century Java is still going strong with more than 9 million developers according to Oracle estimates. This language is powering – at least to some degree – most of the major solutions across the globe.
The interesting part is that all this is fueled by an active community of experts and champions ready to give support. In writing Java programs today, almost every issue has solutions available on the Internet, from the infamous Stack Overflow to other community driven platforms.
And yet, why should you learn Java programming? Why invest your time in this language? This is our take.
Java is open source and has a rich, growing community. Open source is a better way of having more than one expert contributing to the development of a programming language. Java enables open source contributions through its OpenJDK – Java Development Kit. The ability of having expert contributors who are not employed by Oracle – who formally owns the Java trademark – makes it easier to expand the language with innovative ideas that can fulfill modern day needs of developers. For you, as a person who’s about to learn Java, open source community means the source and the blueprints of what you’re learning are a stone’s throw away. It also means the whole community ensures that the language remains relevant and can be used to solve real-life problems.
Java is Object-oriented, where objects are entities that can be distinguished. Examples would be Vehicles, Humans, Ships, Airplanes. These are entities that can be distinguished by their properties. Java employs an object-oriented approach in its development. This means you write code using a naming convention that intrinsically belongs to the domain, or the industry, you work in. Sharing the same language brings developers closer to the business domain, which in turn creates a stronger understanding of the issues at hand and more effective communication between domain experts and developers. An object-oriented approach is a way to break programs into classes and access them using behaviors – methods. There are numerous object-oriented languages available today, learning Java makes it easier to develop the right mindset and adapt to any other object-oriented language in the future.
Java is platform-independent. The mantra is and has always been: write once, run anywhere. This is why this language is powerful. There is a Java virtual machine installed in every home, appliance, smartphone. Those trendy new languages that you hear everyone talking about? Scala? Kotlin? Groovy? Don’t be fooled: they are all running on the Java virtual machine. Without Java, they wouldn’t even exist.
Learning this language will give you opportunities that you’ve never imagined. Are you ready?