Why Learn Java?
A quick look at some of the advantages of learning Java for someone looking to get into programming:
- Syntactically (the way Java is written) it’s is similar to a lot of programming languages. Whilst learning Java the skills and knowledge that you’ll learn are transferable to many other programming languages!
- It won’t cost you a penny! The tools you need to get programming and creating applications are available for free.
- Java is one of the most popular languages in use today. That in itself isn’t an advantage but it means there are a lot of Java jobs out there. Oh and if you get stuck with anything Java, there’s plenty of support online
- Java boasts it’s “Write once, run anywhere”! What does this mean? Java programs run inside something called the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This is just a piece of software you install to run Java programs, in fact you probably have it installed on your computer right now! There are different versions of the JVM which run on different platforms e.g. Windows, Linux etc but they all do the same thing i.e. run your Java programs. So this means you don’t need to worry about the platform your programming on, leave all that to the JVM to figure out. We can just write Java; as long as a platform, be it a computer, mobile phone, router whatever has a JVM we can run our program we don’t need to change a thing!!!
- Java has an extensive API/Class Library! Erm… so like what does this mean? Ok say you were programming a game or a piece of software that needed a stopwatch, you’d have to write it from scratch, that’s boring and requires some thought and I’m lazy! Have no fear Java is here; the Java API/Class Library probably already has a Class(bit of code) that does this, when you install the tool’s to program in Java you’ll have hundreds of Classes like these that you can use to make you life that little bit easier.
Did I miss something out? Was this helpful to you? Need further explanation? Leave a comment.