Are You Learning Java? Why?

by RJ Salicco on May.28, 2009, under Commentary

The other day, I began thinking about how to learn to become a programmer/software developer. Then I began thinking about learning C, C++, Java, Groovy, Ruby, Scala, PHP, Coldfusion, Perl, Python JavaScript and so on. I started thinking about beginning programmers because my youngest brother has started learning C in school. He has started with the standard:

#include<stdio.h>
main()
{
    printf("Hello World");
}

I started programming in a similar fashion and then I would eventually begin to learn PHP then Coldfusion, Java, Groovy, Ruby, Python…I was wondering what sparked my interest to learn other languages. My biggest effort or concentration has been learning Java, that is what I do 9-5 and I even became a SCJP, why you ask? Good question. What if I was a COBOL programmer or RPG programmer, why would I start to learn Java? Here are some reasons I came up with:

* I am in school/fresh out of school and I want to learn Java because:

I took an intro to programming class and the professor/other students were talking about Java.
I have a few friends that are working for big companies that are learning Java.
I see a lot of Java jobs advertised on the job sites.
I have been working with Web scripting languages but I would like to see the Java approach.

* I am a COBOL, RPG or legacy programmer and I want to learn Java because:

My company is re-platforming legacy applications and moving to Java.
I see a lot of Java jobs advertised on the job sites.
Java developers at my company make more money.
I want to be able to put Java on my resume and become more marketable.

Maybe you have some other reasons to learn Java?

:Java

5 Comments for this entry

Craig Kaminsky
May 28th, 2009 on 4:07 pm
I am a traditional web developer (PHP, CFML, ETC.) and I want to learn Java because:
* learn to harness greater power in web apps
* make myself more marketable (more jobs)…I know you typed that twice but it’s big
* learn Java so as to expand my skills into into Groovy/Scala
* Hibernate is pretty bloody cool

Interesting post! I actually registered for, and am currently working on it, a continuing education course series for Java Certification this year.
R.J. Salicco
May 28th, 2009 on 5:37 pm
@Craig Kaminsky Good luck with your SCJP course and test. I was on the JavaRanch site quite a bit to get some information and take their practice tests. Yeah Hibernate is great, Spring is very nice and Groovy is incredible.
Joel Cochran
May 29th, 2009 on 9:51 am
I was a traditional RPG programmer and my company wanted to develop a desktop GUI application. At the time we were totally an IBM shop, which meant that Java was their answer for everything.

I spent a solid year working on Java: OOP is quite a learning curve when you come from a strictly procedural background. (R. J.: JavaRanch was a big part of that for me too) Thanks to my Java experience, I later was able to learn C# .Net easily, which is my main language today.

With RPGIV, ILE, PHP, Perl, Java, JSP, Servlets, ASP.NET MVC, C#, and a slew of other acronyms, my resume has certainly filled out. But that’s not why I learned any of those things: I learned them because I enjoy it, and it makes me a more productive developer.
R.J. Salicco
May 29th, 2009 on 11:26 am
@Joel Cochran Enjoyment is one reason to learn Java that I unintentionally left off the list. I am glad to hear you enjoy what you do. I am very passionate about software development and what I do as well. Thanks for the comment, enjoyment and productivity are 2 very important reasons why people learn new languages that I completely missed.
Aaron
May 30th, 2009 on 3:13 am
I personally think it is the easiest language to start learning with, their is so much documentation and the code readability is almost intuitive. Plus their are so many paths that you could take to learn even more.

I read books about basic before I took my first actual programming class in high school. But I never actually programmed anything in the book, I just read the book and took it for what it was. The code was so similar that the transition from basic to Java was no problem.

Our teacher took everything so slow that we had a lot of free time in the class, which as I took a second year of the upper class gave me a lot of time to do whatever I wanted. I started looking into animated applets and moved into physics simulations like kinematics and polygon collisions.

Now anything in Java is pretty easy to learn for me, its just starting something thats hard. As I learn more langauges like C, I kind of take notice all of the advantages of Java.