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> Despite what HN suggest sever side programming isn’t that big. Android is currently a major component of it’s position, if you don’t include Android then Java
by pron 4y ago
> Despite what HN suggest sever side programming isn’t that big. Android is currently a major component of it’s position, if you don’t include Android then Java isn’t the most popular language.
Quite the opposite. If you look at the hiring labs data, iOS and Android combined make up less than 1/3 of the Java market alone. That's not surprising. There are lots of mobile apps, but they don't require that many hours of work.
> So only something like 20% of programmers are using Java as their primary language and it might have topped 35% at it’s peak.
But no other single language has better prospects, with only JS and Python in the same game. Java is not as super-dominant as it once was, but it is more dominant than almost any other language in existence. Everyone else is doing worse (or about as well in the case of Python and JS). Moreover, there currently aren't languages that are seriously threatening Java's position as PHP and Ruby (and maybe JS with Node.JS) once were.
The observation that the market is more fragmented than before with all languages commanding smaller portions than some did in the past is true. But if you're worried about Java's position, you need to be much more worried about, say, Go's.
- Retric 4y agoThe data I looked at suggests without Android Java falls behind JavaScript. Also, Python is starting to take over at CS schools which is usually a sign it’s going to be even more popular in the future. I suspect Python is going to take over from Java fairly soon, even if it might not reach Java’s mid 2000 dominance. That said, Java never reached the dominance of C, and C never reached the dominance of Fortran so I don’t think such arbitrary benchmarks mean much. In absolute numbers we have far more programmers so the next dominant language is likely to surpass past peaks by that metric.
- pron 4y agoI don't know if Android matters that much (it's quite small), but regardless, as I've said several times, JS and Python are indeed the only languages with arguably better prospects than Java at the moment. Those who want Java to remain in that top tier should at least understand why, if we'd emulate anyone in any way, we'd try to emulate them rather than languages that are doing so much worse than Java. But it's also good to remember that both JS and Python have their own issues, that are by no means smaller than Java's, and neither of them currently threatens Java's dominance on the server, and no one else does either (although PHP and Ruby did in the past).