this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2023
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Programming

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Keep in mind that this is for « typical IEEE members », which I am pretty sure is not a great representative sample of programmers in general.

How many of you programmers out there are IEEE members?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Keep in mind that this is for « typical IEEE members », which I am pretty sure is not a great representative sample of programmers in general.

It's still way better than counting references in YouTube and twitter, and weirdly enough TIOBE's results are in line with this poll.

https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

The lists are quite similar with a slight reordering in the top 7 or 8. I guess both lists are a representative sample of developers… But there is one interesting difference:

IEEE: Python, Java, C++, C, JS, SQL, Go TIOBE: Python, C, C++, Java, C#, JS, VB (!), SQL

In IEEE, VB is way way down the list. Do IEEE members use VB less?

I’m always amazed that C still scores so high, but I’ve been told there is a lot of embedded work still going on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

In IEEE, VB is way way down the list. Do IEEE members use VB less?

TIOBE measures social media chatter. Odds are there are far more people posting noise about VB just due to the low barrier of entry.

Also if I recall correctly VB is heavily used to customize Excel spreadsheets, which contributes to a larger potential userbase than any programming language.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm still not totally convinced TIOBE can accurately determine if something is C or C++.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (6 children)

I'm not a programmer, but why is Java so high up? Are that many devices still running it?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

Java is #1 in enterprise. Pretty solid.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago

It's fairly ingrained in the programming world now. A lot of common problems are known and solved. A lot of devs can code in Java with little uptake. Java runs everywhere. The tools are pretty good.

Desktop apps and servers run it. So like, processing things and all that run well with it.

As mentioned before, Android uses it too. So there's a lot going on.

[–] Solemarc 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think it's a mix of three things.

  1. Java is the only programming language to get popular as a result of marketing. Java was marketed so hard that the company who built it (Sun) went under, but Java did get some really wide adoption.

  2. Java is the backbone of Android. If you want to build apps for Android you're using Java or one of the languages built on top of it (Kotlin, Scala, etc).

  3. It's pretty hard to justify rewriting your codebase to another language. So Java is still around. If you need more proof of this, Most people are still using Java 8 (including android) we are currently at ~java 20.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Clarification:

Very few android jobs are Java anymore. Native android is almost exclusively Kotlin, barring legacy code.

This is because Kotlin has nearly full interop with Java code and integrates into Gradle well. You can just swap over to Kotlin dev with a small investment of a few weeks learning curve, then program faster and cleaner than Java.

Android is currently on Java 17 for what it's worth, though very few codebases have gone through the process of upgrading to 17/Kotlin 1.9/Gradle 8.1

[–] Solemarc 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Huh, I thought the android stack was basically hard stuck at Java 8 and that's why Kotlin still supports Java 8.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Nah we were stuck for years but then they migrated to 11 and now 17.

...I just ran the migrations so I'd know.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Most people are still using Java 8 (including android)...

Surveys don't seem to back this up any more... Yes there's a lot of Java 8 code. But more and more of it is maintenance rather than new development. Respondents of surveys that are able to list the versions they use in production (vs 'pick one') have indicated that for many teams with exposure to Java 8, they also have newer versions in production - showing that Java 8 is increasingly about maintenance than ongoing development (with the blocks to moving forward being a mix economic and technical factors).

The most dominant frameworks in the industry are ending their support for Java 8 - so not too far down the track, staying on Java 8 will mean that while you can pay for platform support, framework support is going to disappear anyway.

...we are currently at ~java 20.

Yes Java 20 is the current release, with Oracle's LTS being Java 17 (the previous ones being 17, 11 and 8 - with 8 having the largest paid support window).

Java 21 is out in a couple of weeks and will become the new Oracle LTS (other vendors and frameworks tend to align on this LTS designation so it continues to be important).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think you replied to the wrong comment but: all correct.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Oops. Just imagine the karma I would have lost, were I still on Reddit...

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Java is the only programming language to get popular as a result of marketing.

I don't think this is true. Java is an outstanding tech stack and was revolutionary in a lot of ways, to the point that it motivated others to shamelessly clone it and in the process create other outstanding tech stacks. See C#.

For starters, Java solved the deployment problem way before containerization was a thing. Developers could simply put together a fat JAR, drop it in a web server like Tomcat, and it would simply reload without a hiccup.

Java is also very tooling-friendly, and has a solid versioning policy.

[–] Solemarc 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I kind of agree and kind of don't.

I don't think that C# exists solely because Microsoft thought Java was a good idea. If that was the case C# wouldn't have been chained to windows for as long as it was. I think Microsoft didn't want to see a general purpose programming language which could also run on Mac and Linux. They've clearly changed their mind now but Java is still massive compared to C#.

I suppose Java did kind of solve the multiple deployment issue and it is pretty funny that the more WASM standards evolve the more they look like the JVM. Ultimately this was a bit before my time so I can't really comment but there's a reason "write once, debug everywhere" is a meme.

I'm not the biggest fan of Java's tooling, I hate that its package managers are separate from it, python and C# can both do it why can't java! I'm not sure what you mean by versioning policy but if you mean the ordeal surrounding Java versions I really disagree. In this case, I think Java is very lucky it already has wide adoption, I don't think Java would get any real traction if it was released today because of the licensing issues.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

A lot of commercial apps are built with it. And if you're not using Kotlin, you're probably using Java for Android dev.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And if you’re not using Kotlin, you’re probably using Java for Android dev.

Java is the dominant platform for web services, and some companies including FANGs even standardized their whole infrastructure around it.

Also, Java is basically the default programming language in some degrees.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Just as an example, I worked as a contractor with the biggest bank in Latin America before and basically all their server code is Java (with new code in Kotlin nowadays).

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Do they still have the "billions of devices running java" banner when installing the jre? They could be including Android, as it mostly uses Java.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Above 0.33:

Spectrum

  1. Python
  2. Java
  3. C++
  4. C
  5. JavaScript
  6. C#
  7. SQL

Jobs

  1. SQL
  2. Python
  3. Java
  4. JavaScript
  5. C++

Trending

  1. Python
  2. Java
  3. JavaScript
  4. C++
  5. SQL
  6. C#
  7. C

Python king. Deserved?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Java, JavaScript, Python and SQL and you'll be pretty safe for some of the years to come.

[–] kicksystem 1 points 1 year ago

I am rooting for Mojo.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Depends on the use case.

I wrote a webserver in python the last three years and am now changing to java for a new position, and it feels like programming with training wheels.

But then again i did some data science with python and could not have imagined doing it with java.

[–] [email protected] -3 points 1 year ago

Not really deserved. Mostly luck

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Who's going to tell them that SQL is not a programming language.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I find it amazing that rust is still so far down. Is there something about the language or the community holding it back from gaining spots? Or is it just that other languages are so established, that writing the things that already exist in them just keeps its usercount high?