Before I dive into considering why you should be a Java developer, let me give a brief history of the Java programming language.
Java was started as a project by the sun micro-system, and the first version was initiated between 1991 - 1995 by a team of engineers which includes; James Gosling, Patrick Naughton, Chris Warth, Ed Frank, and Mike Sheridan.
The primary goal behind Java was to be platform independence, which means you can write a Java program once and run it everywhere, this at the time was a huge paradigm shift from the earliest programming language like C which was platform-dependent.
Source code files ----> Compiler ------> Executable
This was how the C model worked at the time, which was, you the "developer" writing your source code file and then giving it to a compiler which the compiler will compile/convert to an executable file or a machine code which will then run on a machine which could be your personal computers or phone devices. The problem with this model was that different types of machines had different machine-level codes, e.g a machine code that would run on Linux will not run on windows, although this was not just related to the operating system alone, there was a bunch of other stuff, like the processors' architecture, the number of bits involved, etc.
Imagine as a developer back then, you will need to create an executable file for different operating systems if you want your code to run on all machines, programmers are lazy, so they don't have that time.
This was one of the gaps the Java language was able to solve at the time by you writing your source code file once and being able to run it across multiple platforms.
SOME OF THE GOALS OF JAVA
Simple => this means the Java language can be written without much extensive training, the basic concept was that the fundamentals should be easy to grab with maintaining current software best practices.
Object-oriented => another goal of the Java language is that it must be object-based as this helps function within complex network environments.
Robust and Secure => as a language developed to create highly reliable software, it has to be secure and be able to find errors at compile time.
High performance => the Java platform adopts a model by which the interpreter can run at full speed without having to check the Java runtime environment.
Thread and Dynamic => the java language has the capability to do more than one thing at a time via its multi-threading capability, while the Java compiler has a strict static compile-time checking, the Java run time is dynamic in that classes are connected only when they are needed.
Having introduced a brief history of the Java language, let's get back to the crux of this post.
WHY YOU SHOULD BE A JAVA DEVELOPER
i. Java developers earn well =>
Now money is important in whatever will do, but this should not be your main focus while trying to get into tech or learn any important skills for that matter, my motto in life is to learn any skill efficiently well enough to solve problems and the money will definitely flow in. having said that according to Glassdoor a java developer could earn above 75k-100k USD in the U.S for regular Java engineers.
ii. Java is relatively easy to learn =>
Don't get this wrong, learning any language is "not easy" in the real sense, considering the number of man-hours you have to put into reaching the point of being employable, but when comparing learning Java to learning a language like C, then Java becomes easy as it was originally developed to be simple as possible to write.
iii. Java Developers are in great demand =>
The Java community is large, according to Oracle there are about 9,000,000 Java developers worldwide, while about 3,000,000,000 devices run on Java applications in the world, which makes the demand for Java developers high.
iv. Java is an object-oriented programming language =>
One of the selling points of Java is in being object-oriented as it helps you create modular programs that be created once and run anywhere which saves developers time and reduce cost for companies.
v. Java is platform-independent =>
The idea behind Java from when it was developed at the time was to make it platform-independent which was a big paradigm shift in the programming world from the earliest languages like C and C++ that were more platform-dependent, which basically means you can run the same Java files on different platforms which save considerable time and effort, and that is the motto behind Java "write once, run everywhere."
vi. Java niches =>
ava can be used in a lot of current trending tech stuff from IoT to the blockchain, cloud computing to artificial intelligence as a Java programmer you will be able to choose from any of the interesting tech niches and help write source code that solves real-time problems while smiling to the bank at the same time.
So folks, here are a few reasons why you should consider being a Java developer, although I will always advise learning the basics while starting out as this helps you pick up any language along the way.
Until my next post guys, keep learning and applying that knowledge to solving problems.
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