One of the biggest challenges in pursuing a career in software development is to figure out which language you want to work. In addition to commonly used software programming languages like C, C++, Java a lot of new programming languages such as Python, Ruby on Rails have surfaced especially because they are used by a lot of consumer based start-ups these days.

With so many front and back end languages, the choice of learning Java is a failsafe decision and mastering Java can ensure that you have a bright future in software programming.

What is Java

Java is a computer programming language that is designed to be platform independent meaning that the language can virtually run on any hardware platform. This platform independence and an object oriented framework make Java the preferred language of development especially for client-server web applications.

Who Uses Java

Java is the defacto language for business applications and is pretty much used at every financial institution be it back end systems, trading portals, online banking etc. Java is also the preferred languages for developing e-commerce platforms and even most packaged enterprise applications like SAP have a huge codebase written in Java.

The popularity of Java is best understood by looking at some companies that use Java. Companies like Facebook, Linkedin, Google, E-bay extensively use Java in addition to C++, Python etc. Some of the largest enterprise software vendors like Oracle and SAP use Java. Infact, the purchase of Sun Microsystems (Java was licensed under an open source model by Sun) by Oracle clearly suggests the importance of Java in the technology space.

Why You Need To Learn Java

While reading the latest news on languages might suggest that newer languages like Python are the future of programming languages, Java continues to remain one language every technology company has to use at some stage.

One of the most important yet overlooked aspects about Java is the presence of a huge ecosystem around the language framework. Pretty much anything you want to do; there is a library available for you via Javadocs or reusable APIs.

Performance and scalability are critical parameters for evaluating a programming language. This is where Java excels due to its reusability and encapsulation features which reduce code duplications to a large extent. This is the very reason that despite being developed using Ruby on Rails, Twitter is increasing looking to shift it’s codebase to Java to improve performance

Java has existed for more than a decade and has remained quite stable in the number of updated releases it has had over the years. This makes it easier to undergo Java training and become an expert at it unlike other languages where the language itself keeps changing frequently thereby increasing the costs of training.