Why you should learn Java Programming Language

Why you should learn Java Programming Language

Here is my list of 10 reasons, which I tell anyone who asks my opinion about learning Java, and whether Java is the best programming language in terms of opportunities, development and community support.

1) Java is Easy to learn

Many would be surprised to see this one of the top reason for learning Java or considering it as the best programming language, but it is. If you have a steep learning curve, it would be difficult to get productive in a short span of time, which is the case with most of the professional project.

Java has fluent English like syntax with minimum magic characters e.g. Generics angle brackets, which makes it easy to read Java program and learn quickly.

Once a programmer is familiar with initial hurdles with installing JDK and setting up PATH and understand How Classpath works, it's pretty easy to write a program in Java.

2) Java is an Object Oriented Programming Language

Another reason, which made Java popular is that it's an Object Oriented Programming language. Developing OOP application is much easier, and it also helps to keep system modular, flexible and extensible.

Once you have knowledge of key OOP concepts like Abstraction, Encapsulation, Polymorphism, and Inheritance, you can use all those with Java. Java itself embodies many best practices and design pattern in its library.

Java is one of the few close to 100% OOP programming language. Java also promotes the use of SOLID and Object-oriented design principles in form of open source projects like Spring, which make sure your object dependency is managed well by using Dependency Injection principle

3) Java has Rich API

One more reason for Java programming language's huge success is it's Rich API and most importantly it's highly visible because come with Java installation.

When I first started Java programming, I used to code Applets and those days Applets provides great animation capability, which amazes new programmer like us, who are used to code in Turbo C++ editor.

Java provides API for I/O, networking, utilities, XML parsing, database connection, and almost everything. Whatever left is covered by open source libraries like Apache Commons, Google Guava, Jackson, Gson, Apache POI, and others.

4) Powerful development tools e.g. Eclipse, Netbeans

Believe it or not, Eclipse and Netbeans have played a huge role to make Java one of the best programming languages. Coding in IDE is a pleasure, especially if you have coded in DOS Editor or Notepad.

They not only help in code completion but also provides powerful debugging capability, which is essential for real-world development. Integrated Development Environment (IDE) made Java development much easier, faster and fluent. It's easy to search, refactor and read code using IDEs.

Apart from IDE, Java platform also has several other tools e.g.. Maven and ANT for building Java applications, decompilers, JConsole, Visual VM for monitoring Heap usage etc.

5) Great collection of Open Source libraries

Open source libraries ensure that Java should be used everywhere. Apache, Google, and other organization have contributed a lot of great libraries, which makes Java development easy, faster and cost-effective.

There are frameworks like Spring, Struts, Maven, which ensures that Java development follows best practices of software craftsmanship, promotes the use of design patterns and assisted Java developers to get there job done.

6) Wonderful Community Support

A strong and thriving community is the biggest strength of Java programming language and platform. No matter, How good a language is, it wouldn't survive, if there is no community to support, help and share their knowledge.

Java has been very lucky, it has lots of active forums, StackOverflow, open source organizations and several Java user groups to help everything.

There is the community to help beginners, advanced and even expert Java programmers. Java actually promotes taking and giving back to community habit. Lots of programmers, who use open source, contribute as a commiter, tester etc.

7) Java is FREE

People like FREE things, Don't you? So if a programmer wants to learn a programming language or an organization wants to use a technology, COST is an important factor. Since Java is free from the start, i.e. you don't need to pay anything to create Java application.

This FREE thing also helped Java to become popular among individual programmers, and among large organizations. If you are curious where exactly Java is used in the real world, see that post. I have talked about Java's adoption by all around the world.

Availability of Java programmers is another big thing, which makes an organization to choose Java for there strategic development.

8) Excellent documentation support - Javadocs

When I first saw Javadoc, I was amazed. It's a great piece of documentation, which tells a lot of things about Java API. I think without Javadoc documentation, Java wouldn't be as popular, and it's one of the main reason, Why I think Java is the best programming language.

Not everyone has time and intention to look at the code to learn what a method does or how to use a class. Javadoc made learning easy, and provide an excellent reference while coding in Java. 

With the advent of IDEs e.g. Eclipse, you don't even need to look Javadoc explicitly in the browser, but you can get all information in your IDE window itself.

9) Java is Platform Independent

In the 1990s, this was the main reason for Java's popularity. The idea of platform independence
 is great, and Java's tagline "write once run anywhere" and acronym "WORA" was enticing enough to attract lots of new development in Java.

This is still one of the reason for Java being the best programming language, most of Java applications are developed in Windows environment and run on UNIX platform.

10) Java is Everywhere

Yes, Java is everywhere, it's on the desktop, it's on mobile, it's on the card, almost everywhere and so is Java programmers. I think Java programmer outnumber any other programming language professional.

Though I don't have any data to back this up, it's based on experience. This huge availability of Java programmers is another reason, why organization prefers to choose Java for new development than any other programming language.

Having said that, programming is a very big field and if you look at C and UNIX, which is still surviving and even stronger enough to live another 20 years, Java also falls in the same league.

Though there are a lot of talks about functional programming, Scala, and other JVM languages, they need to go a long way to match community, resources, and popularity of Java.

Also, OOP is one of the best programming paradigms, and as long as it will be there Java will remain solid.