9 Reasons Why Java is Popular Among Developers and Programmers
Sustaining a place in the list of top five programming languages every year, in the era where programming languages and technologies are booming, is not a simple task. And Java has accomplished this pretty easily. This year, 2019, marks the 24th anniversary of the multi-faceted programming language. Still, the craze it carries remains unbeaten!
While it has its birth name as Oak, named after an oak tree that stood outside its creator James Gosling’s office, later called as Green, ‘Java’ is the third name for the programming language Java. Designed in line with C/C++ in style and syntax, Java became popular very soon among the developer and programming community owing to many of its unique and useful features.
As we move ahead in this blog post, let us deep dive into the reasons why Java is popular among the developer and programmer community, and where it has beaten its counterparts.
An Object-Oriented Programming Language
Object-oriented programming (OOP), in itself, has changed the way of programming that existed prior to its inventions. And Java, which has been designed entirely having OOP at its core, just made this concept much more attractive.
Programmers love to work with OOP because it offers clear modular structure, makes code reusable, eases maintenance of the code and speeds up the process of development. OOP also increases the productivity of the programmer and offers flexibility to choose from rich inbuilt libraries.
Java provides abstraction, encapsulation, polymorphism, and inheritance, besides offering many design patterns and best practices to programmers. Also, managing object dependency is easier with the dependency injection principle of Java. The code designed in Java is robust because Java objects contain no such references to data which are external to themselves.
An Omnipresent
As per the latest stats, there are more than 3 billion devices that are running primarily on Java. Android apps, web applications, software tools such as Eclipse, IntelliJ IDEA, and NetBeans IDE, scientific applications such as natural language processing are all being developed in Java.
Programmers prefer Java for such design and applications because Java eases designing of scalable solutions and provides high-level concurrency tools than any other programming languages. This is good news to those who are aspiring to learn Java because learning Java opens up opportunities to choose from a myriad of proven career paths.
User-Friendly Language
For a beginner, learning Java means moving in two stages — learning Core Java and then mastering the Advanced Java. It means Java provides a simpler learning path. Also, if a user is familiar with installing JDK and setting up Classpath, the rest is just a cakewalk. As James Gosling mentioned, “Java is C++ without the guns, clubs, and knives”, which means if the learner has a basic knowledge of C and C++, it takes lesser time to master Java.
The syntax of Java is in fluent English which makes it easier for the learner to understand and remember, too.
A Not to Miss Technology for IoT, Machine Learning and Data Science
One big advantage with Java is that it offers the ultimate platform for developing code that is multi-platform compatible. And this is exactly what data science needs.
Secondly, Scala is one of the technologies that programmers have to use to build big data processing and machine learning solutions. However, Scala is not that beginner friendly, many programmers are happily using Java in its place, as essentially Scala is built on JVM and goes well with Java.
Also, if a developer has expertise in Java, it is easy for him to learn Hadoop or Hive, which are the other technologies needed for working with grid computing and machine learning.
Java’s Micro Edition (ME) has proven to be a reliable and convenient platform to create Internet of Things (IoT) based applications too.
Rich in API
Java’s Application Programming Interface (API) is extensive and rich. Though the language contains 50 keywords, the Java API is enormous with hundreds of methods that can be directly used in any program. It is not even essential for a Java developer to gain hands-on experience in all of them, only a basic knowledge of them would suffice for programming comfortably in Java.
The Java API contains methods that are needed for every purpose — connecting to databases, parsing XML, dealing with input-output, or networking. Additionally, a programmer can also make use of open source libraries such as Google Guava, Gson, Apache POI or Apache Commons.
Offers a Package of Powerful Development Tools
Java is unique in another aspect — its Integrated Development Environment (IDE) is all comprehensive. It includes many automation tools, editor and debugger. Among the developers’ community, Java IDEs NetBeans and Eclipse are very popular. Other powerful tools that Java offers include Maven and ANT for building Java applications, decompilers, JConsole, Visual VM for monitoring Heap usage and Jenkins for Continuous Integration and delivery.
The Number One in Community Support
Another reason why Java enjoys a vibrant and active programming language status because of the huge community support too. It is also the second largest among the Stack Overflow community, which shows its immense popularity and user-base.
Widely Used by Industry Giants
Ranging from Macintosh, Unix/Linux, mainframe systems, Windows and mobile phones, Java’s RunTime Environment (JRE) is beautifully compatible with any existing devices. This is because Java is platform independent and all it needs it its JRE installed on the device that you want to run the application on. And yes, you are good to go!
Many of the industry giants in banking, retail sector, and utilities — all use Java even as of today. Java’s “Write Once Run Anywhere” (WORA) feature has made all these possible!
Free and Excellently Documented
A programmer need not pay a penny to create an application in Java. It is an open-source technology, free to use and implement.
Besides, the documentation that is provided with Java is well-explained and has all the features that make a beginner fall in love with learning with Java. Javadoc is an excellent help guide to refer in case of any clarifications needed while coding in Java.
