Java vs. Language: Now That We’ve Moved to Java 8 and the New Java Development Kit, Should You Upgrade?
By: Rafiq Wayani
January 28, 2015
I have been working with Java since its inception. I have seen several changes to the language and have been involved in several discussions around the pros and cons of Java as a language. Here is my take on some of the pros and cons of using Java as your programming language of choice.
Good Programming Why not use a good programming language? You can use any language to create a program that solves problems. The key is to use a good programming language so you can easily maintain your code over time. However, many languages are not suitable for large projects because they require too much memory or they do not support multiple processes. Java tackles these problems by providing object-oriented features that allow multiple threads to run concurrently (at the same time), and it also allows you to build large applications without worrying about memory management issues.
Bad Programming Why would you not use a bad programming language? Some people are tempted to write their code in C++, even though it is prone to errors and hard to debug. If you want to stay away from these common problems, consider switching to Python
Java vs. Language: Now That We’ve Moved to Java 8 and the New Java Development Kit, Should You Upgrade?
Kylie Stradley
Posted on February 1, 2018
Context
I was recently asked in an interview, “What do you like/dislike about Java?” This question made me realize I have a lot of opinions about Java. What follows is my attempt to organize those opinions and make them more clear. I have been primarily writing Java for the past year at my current job, but previously I wrote Ruby and JavaScript.
Pros
Java is everywhere! It’s still one of the most popular languages, so there are a ton of libraries and tools available to help make your life easier.
With Java 8 and the new Java Development Kit (JDK) many people are considering upgrading to Java. For example, if you’re still using Java 7, now is a great time to upgrade to Java 8.
The question is: should you? To answer that question, let’s look at the pros and cons of Java as a language.
Pros of Java
Easy to learn: Anyone with basic programming knowledge can learn Java programming easily. There are tons of free resources online, including Oracle’s own website, where you can learn more about the language and its features.
Easy to use: The standardization of classes and objects makes it easier for programmers to work in teams. And you don’t have to worry about memory management because it takes care of itself for you.
Portability and interoperability: Any computer with a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) can run your code regardless of operating system or hardware architecture. That means you can write your code once and run it anywhere.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this question, and it’s a great one. Now that Java 8 is here and the New JDK is wrapping up, I think it’s time to take a look at the pros and cons of Java as a language. This should help you decide whether or not upgrading is a good idea for your business.First, let’s start with the pros:
Pro: It’s well-documented
There are literally hundreds of books on Java, written by some very well-respected authors. If you want to know how to do something in Java, chances are there is a book on it.Java is so well-documented that if you have any problems solving your problems with Java, you can almost always find someone who has solved them before. The sheer number of people using Java means that there are also plenty of forums and mailing lists where people discuss their problems with the language.
I’ve been a Java developer for 18 years, and I still get asked the same question by developers everywhere: Is Java a good language? I know it’s a loaded question, but not one that’s easy to answer. It all depends on what you mean by “good.”
Java is certainly popular. It’s the top language used to create Android apps and the second most popular language on GitHub — after JavaScript — with more than 1.6 million repositories. It has many of the features developers love, such as automatic memory management, cross-platform portability, and a huge library of open-source packages. It also has its fair share of critics, who complain about its verbosity, performance issues, and outdated syntax.
Now that Java 8 is here and Oracle recently released the JDK 9 development kit, let’s examine how each new version brings upgrades to performance and code quality. We’ll also take a look at ways in which Java can be improved — or perhaps even replaced — by newer languages like Kotlin or Scala
With the release of Java 8 (and JDK 8), the language has reached a new level of maturity. These releases are a great chance for developers to update their knowledge of Java, and perhaps even improve their experience with it.
Java 8 is by far the largest upgrade to the language since Java 5. It brings many features that have been standard in other programming languages for years. The development team also took advantage of this opportunity to improve some features that were included in previous versions.
To help you decide whether or not to upgrade your code, I’ve compiled an overview of what’s new in these releases and how it affects our work with Java as a language.
Should you upgrade?
In my experience, there are two types of Java developers: those who know how to use the language effectively and those who don’t.
The “don’t” crowd includes a lot of people who learned Java in college or at a boot camp and have never worked as programmers. They’re the ones still writing code like this:
List
for(int i = 0; i < personList.size(); i++) { Person person = personList.get(i); System.out.println("Person Name: " + person.getName()); } These folks tend to get stuck in their ways and prefer what they know, but that's not necessarily a bad thing if they know how to build software correctly and are able to find bugs before release. For these developers, I recommend sticking with Java 7 until you feel comfortable enough with the new features of Java 8 and JDK 11 that you can take advantage of them without slowing down development or making mistakes. (I wrote about some new features of Java 8 in this blog post.) If you're one of these developers, I'd love to hear from you about how you feel about the new features