Antonio Evora Gala wrote:From your experience...Is functional programming (i.e. lambda expressions) expertise something that companies are demanding for a Java developer or are most of them still using Java 7 or even older versions?
Thank you
Hi Antonio,
In my experience it depends on the company - bigger companies are much slower to adopt the latest versions of Java than smaller companies or startups. The reason is usually due to security concerns and the fact that upgrading is a time consuming process that requires a lot of
testing and it doesn't provide a visible 'revenue
boost' that usually drives their decisions. Sometimes it takes years after a new release before they even consider an upgrade!
But as for functional programming in general, Java is primarily an OOP language, so that will always be the focus. Lambdas are a nice way to reduce the verbosity of the language, but keep in mind that they don't do anything that you couldn't already do with anonymous classes. Of course there will be specialized scenarios where purely functional programming is useful, but I suspect that it will be the minority of the time. Solid, object-oriented programming will be in the highest demand, with functional experience as more of a 'bonus' feature.