Java never die

The common mistake is compare Java to Ruby on Rails.

Ruby on Rails is not a language and Java is not a framework. Rails is a database driven framework meaning that developer must only create a database table and framework will take care about rest. There are many such and best frameworks in Java. This kind of framework follow Domain Driven Design or Model Driven Architecture and Convention over Configuration approach. The difference, that java developer using such frameworks, even does not must to know nothing about databases and SQL. All that she need to know is how to create simple java class so called POJO (Plain Old Java Object) or javabean. You can read Java Domain Driven Framework Review for comparison of such java frameworks, but this article about comparing languages. Not frameworks.

What must to be compared to answer question what language is the best? And so what language worth to learn?

1. Possibility to find job.

Try your local online job finder for job offers that you believe to and compare results for next keywords: java, php, .net, ruby, python.
Look at results on indeed.com: java – 64,204 job offers, php – 12,504, .net – 86,516, ruby – 5,176, python – 8,949. Means that java programmers on demand more than ten times compare to ruby programmers. .Net is only real competitor to java base on this research, but .Net loses to java on other comparison parameters. By the way, java programmers salaries is the highest in the market.

2. Developers community size.
Is it important to you if developers community big or small? Yes and very, because on this depends how quickly you can find answers to your questions. Experienced programmers know and for newbie worth to know, that big part of programmers work is to google how to make this or that. Its not so simple to find exact size of java developers over the world, but I think about 5 000,000 or so and this is the biggest programming community. You can be able to find answers to all your question in a moment or two. In addition to individual developers there are many enterprises that invest lot of money in Java. Are next names sounds familiar for you: Google, IBM, Oracle, Apache? Its very short list of enterprises invest in Java and this list may be increased thousands of times.

3. Your programming needs already covered by open source libraries free available to download and use, or core language libraries.
I suppose you are enjoy writing code in your loved programming language. But your employer enjoy when you finish your work as quickly as possible. Some conflict of interests is present isn’t it? In addition to said above sometimes is not so interesting to create prototype in Ruby or Python of something already successful created in Java. So what is already covered by open source libraries? Answer that in Java very hard to find something that not implemented yet by anybody anywhere. And in Ruby or Python you must implement it by yourself or to use Java libraries through some bridge like JRuby or JPython. Want example? You welcome. Try to google (you can use your favorite search engine of course) “web test tool” and compare results adding java or ruby or python. The result speaks for itself. Something that must be talked: Rich Internet Applications. Java the only language that has its own RIA implementation – Google Web Toolkit framework. Flex and OpenLaszlo are another RIA frameworks but them lack the power of Java. And Java itself is most powerful language. Compare dozen or so of collections classes in java to two or three in ruby.

4. Language syntax itself.
I would say that this is mainly a matter of taste. I prefer java syntax. Its by the way the syntax used by javascript and c++/# too.
The syntax of PHP and Flex is very similar to java syntax. So, when you invest your time in learning java syntax you can expect high dividends as a result of receiving knowledge of four languages syntax and not one.

5. Flexibility and very high number of available frameworks.
Ruby on Rails (note: not Ruby itself!) pretend to be the way for rapid web development. May be. But choosing Ruby as your programming language, you lose availability of further choice. Rails is only available option for Ruby developer. But in Java you have dozens of framework to choose from. Sometimes it can be good and some time it can be hard to make right choice. But i privately prefer to make choices by myself. What Java framework to use in web application development is article that can be used as short guide in java frameworks world.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 6th, 2009 at 7:21 pm and is filed under java. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.