Why is Java Declining?

[frank davis]

The popularity of Java seems to have taken a sharp plunge recently.
http://www.developer.com/java/other/article.php/3455011

[Anselm Paulinus]

Simple; There are no jobs, You do not want to stay with a technology if the jobs ain't there. There were times COBOL was the in thing but those days are gone. Also the days of Java are numbered as it looks right now. It will become antiquity one day in accordance with the law of economics.

[Steven Bell]

Originally posted by Anselm Paulinus:
Simple; There are no jobs, You do not want to stay with a technology if the jobs ain't there. There were times COBOL was the in thing but those days are gone. Also the days of Java are numbered as it looks right now. It will become antiquity one day in accordance with the law of economics.

I'm not quite sure where you get that. The Java Dev group I'm in is expanding rather rapidly. Most job sites have tons of Java jobs. If anything I would say that Java has a good shot at some revival on the desktop.

Or are you just trolling.

[Anselm Paulinus]

Originally posted by Steven Bell:


I'm not quite sure where you get that. The Java Dev group I'm in is expanding rather rapidly. Most job sites have tons of Java jobs. If anything I would say that Java has a good shot at some revival on the desktop.

Or are you just trolling.

Little wonder there are more Java developers out of job now than there has been in the history of the technology, You are new in this forum, take some time and read the posts of those with high degree of qualifications, certifications and experience yet can not find jobs, then tell me why my initial response was out of order. Count yourself lucky that you are gainfully employed hence do not know how those without jobs, despite all their efforts are feeling. I 've been there so I know what it feels like to put in all the efforts with nothing to show for it.

Even the technology is now been regarded by IT magazines as cooling or cool, so why deceive people when we can preety much say it like it is thereby enabling people to make informed decisions.

[frank davis]

Originally posted by Anselm Paulinus:
Simple; There are no jobs, You do not want to stay with a technology if the jobs ain't there. There were times COBOL was the in thing but those days are gone. Also the days of Java are numbered as it looks right now. It will become antiquity one day in accordance with the law of economics.

The question is "Why" as noted in the topic of the post. Why would C, a language that seems more ancient, less capable of using OO advantages, possibly a smaller base of libraries/classes, less likely to be taught to college students (thus not ensuring a pool of future maintenance/developers); why is it prefferable over Java? I know there are cases where pure processing speed is paramount and C is better, but most applications do fall into that category.

There must be some aberration in the metrics used to measure popularity. Perhaps overseas development is ignored, after all, there are not less IT jobs overall and more software than ever is being created.

[Anselm Paulinus]

Originally posted by herb slocomb:


The question is "Why" as noted in the topic of the post. Why would C, a language that seems more ancient, less capable of using OO advantages, possibly a smaller base of libraries/classes, less likely to be taught to college students (thus not ensuring a pool of future maintenance/developers); why is it prefferable over Java? I know there are cases where pure processing speed is paramount and C is better, but most applications do fall into that category.

There must be some aberration in the metrics used to measure popularity. Perhaps overseas development is ignored, after all, there are not less IT jobs overall and more software than ever is being created.

Do not know when ability of language to use OO became synonymous with longevity or generall acceptance; small talk is more OO than Java but I do not think it is more accepted than java. The life span of a product does not depend on the length of time its been in existence. Radios been in existence for over a hundred years, and I doubt if there is any home that still does not have one, that does not mean radios ain't going to be antiques one day. People will generally drift to things that gives them more satisfaction translating to more returns in what ever they do, if you must float and sink with java, heh feel free. I am also a java developer with some sun certifications to my name like others here, I am also gainfully employed, but I got to keep my options open.
Bye,
Anselm.

[Steven Bell]

Originally posted by herb slocomb:


Why would C, a language that seems more ancient, less capable of using OO advantages, possibly a smaller base of libraries/classes, less likely to be taught to college students (thus not ensuring a pool of future maintenance/developers); why is it prefferable over Java?
...
There must be some aberration in the metrics used to measure popularity. Perhaps overseas development is ignored, after all, there are not less IT jobs overall and more software than ever is being created.

"The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written."

This is from there site. They basically do a bunch of searches on available search engines and compile the results. If you look at their long term trends Java, over the past 3 years, has averaged above all other languages, took a big dip about April 04 and has been rising for the past few months. C++ is on a decline, C# is hardly on the map. C has been on a dip, but has just jumped back up to what it was 3 years ago.

All this said I don't give much credance to the survey, it can hardly be considered 'scientific' by any means.

[Steven Bell]

Some other things to consider.

Bruce Eckel's opinion:
http://onthethought.blogspot.com/2004/12/java-slipping.html

As well as one of the comments from that site:

"Ed The Engineer said...

I don't believe Java is slipping at all in developer mindshare, and certainly not in open source mindshare.

For instance, I have kept statistics on the languages used on the open source repository Sourceforge.net for the past 7 months, and if current growth rates continue, Java is about to take the #2 spot among languages in the next 3 months (surpassing C) for the most projects, and Java has the 2nd fastest absolute numeric and normalized percentage growth rates (in terms of projects) of any language except C#. Java is projected to overtake C++ 6 months after it overtakes C on Sourceforge (in terms of numbers of projects).

Likewise, Freshmeat (a search list which is restricted to Unix and Multiplatform projects which are completed or at least usable, a little choosier than Sourceforge) already has Java as the #2 language in terms of absolute and normalized percentage number of projects (after C), and Java has the fastest growth rate of any language (in terms of absolute numeric and normalized percentage growth rates of projects) as well.

Finally, Skillmarket (http://mshiltonj.com/sm/) regularly shows that Java has the second largest number of job recs after SQL, and has 1.5x times more reqs than its next closest competitor, C++.

As for the old saw about Java being too slow, Java rules among multiplatform languages, check out the Win32 vs. Linux language shootout page at (http://dada.perl.it/shootout/craps2craps.html).

As for the complexity of Java vs. scripting languages like PHP, hey, whatever syntactic sugar floats your boat, but don't seriously tell me an interpreted language will ever run faster than a compiled one, and speed is one of the pillars of scalability. We can already see what language enterprise developers are most in demand now, maybe we can talk again when, if ever, PHP begins to be more widely used in enterprise development.

Java currently rules among multi-platform languages, and performs impressively against, for instance, GNU C++. Notice how the overhead of type checking alone weighs down GNU C++ vs. GNU C. When one takes into account the overhead for typechecking, bounds checking, security and garbage collection, of course Java will always be 5-20% slower than doing an unmanaged C++ program under optimal conditions (compiled optimally for the exact CPU as Java does instead of generic executables, for instance), but is that what you want to interface with the big bad internet?

Just my two cents..."

[Jeroen Wenting]

This reads like the weekly "Java is dead" thread...

There are not less positions for Java developers than there used to be but the number of people calling themselves Java developers has gone up dramatically at the same time people in Java development jobs have stopped switching jobs every few months.
This decreases the number of job LISTINGS for those jobs at the same time the number of people looking at those job listings is increasing.

Of course some of those jobs have moved to low income countries like India and Pakistan, leading to localised decreases in the number of available positions.

The same is true for Cobol as well to a degree. People coding Cobol usually stick for long times in those positions so few are listed.
There though the number of new entrants into the market is actually low, causing employers to have trouble filling the positions that do open up.

[Amit Mathur]

Of course some of those jobs have moved to low income countries like India and Pakistan, leading to localised decreases in the number of available positions.

Sorry to interurpt, and this a bit out of context, but I dont think its a fair comparison. Is Pak IT industry comparable to India's? Probably China or Philippines or Ireland would have been a better example.
[ January 21, 2005: Message edited by: Amit Mathur ]

[Jay Ashar]

Originally posted by Amit Mathur:


Is Pak IT industry comparable to India's?

[ January 21, 2005: Message edited by: Amit Mathur ]

What is pak?

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Originally posted by Amit Mathur:


Sorry to interurpt, and this a bit out of context, but I dont think its a fair comparison. Is Pak IT industry comparable to India's? Probably China or Philippines or Ireland would have been a better example.

[ January 21, 2005: Message edited by: Amit Mathur ]

A word to the wise: Pak or Paki might be considered offensive by some people. Better stay with Pakistani

[Jayesh Lalwani]

Originally posted by Steven Bell:


"The TIOBE Programming Community index gives an indication of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the world-wide availability of skilled engineers, courses and third party vendors. The popular search engines Google, MSN, and Yahoo! are used to calculate the ratings. Observe that the TPC index is not about the best programming language or the language in which most lines of code have been written."

Wait a minute!! They do a search and determine the rank based on results. No wonder C is top on the list. The messageboards must be filled with l33t like "C U l8r"

[soniya saxena]

Totally agree with Jeroen.

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
This reads like the weekly "Java is dead" thread...

There are not less positions for Java developers than there used to be but the number of people calling themselves Java developers has gone up dramatically at the same time people in Java development jobs have stopped switching jobs every few months.
This decreases the number of job LISTINGS for those jobs at the same time the number of people looking at those job listings is increasing.

Of course some of those jobs have moved to low income countries like India and Pakistan, leading to localised decreases in the number of available positions.

The same is true for Cobol as well to a degree. People coding Cobol usually stick for long times in those positions so few are listed.
There though the number of new entrants into the market is actually low, causing employers to have trouble filling the positions that do open up.

[arnel nicolas]

The researchers from TIOBE made an incorrect assumption that Java is declining. They should not base popularity according to search engines. They should based it on how it stands in the IT industry. Look at Sourceforge.net and The Jakarta Projects, these are just some of the few sites swarmed with Java Projects. I guess JavaRanch would'nt be as famous as it is without java.

[Robert Hayes]

For a one sentence post I don't want to waste too much energy on a reply...

But, according to that site, I should have stuck with Delphi/Kylix and sent an email to Anders telling him to come back to Borland.

Additionally I should have sent an email to John Carmack telling him that he really should have written Doom 3 in C...

The guys that have been around a while will see the humor in my post

[Jeroen Wenting]

Originally posted by Amit Mathur:


Sorry to interurpt, and this a bit out of context, but I dont think its a fair comparison. Is Pak IT industry comparable to India's? Probably China or Philippines or Ireland would have been a better example.

It is, at least where offshoring is concerned. Of course it's smaller than India (less people around to shove behind a computer screen as codemonkeys) but the effect is the same.

[Jeroen Wenting]

Originally posted by Jay Ashar:


What is pak?

Obviously you haven't read your Niven or you'd know all about the Pak.

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:


It is, at least where offshoring is concerned. Of course it's smaller than India (less people around to shove behind a computer screen as codemonkeys) but the effect is the same.

Is it really?

source

Pakistan's software exports are a meagre $30 million, dwarfed by rival India which exported software worth $3.9 billion in 1999/2000 (April-March), up from $2.65 billion in 1998/99 and growing at roughly 50 per cent each year.

The idea of bringing up 'India and Pakistan' in anything to do with India, is a result of successful Pakistan PR mission, and the media (in 80's and 90's) had only one think to talk about them, and that was about the conflict and to remain politically correct, they gave equal importance to both courtiers (more so to Pakistan, because of then bipolar international politics). Since then, people who think they are well-read, or who think they know-it-all, seems to be having great difficulty accepting the difference between the two, and the changes in the region and of course the fact that the context of this comparison is entirely different. For instance, Indian GDP is around 3 trillion dollars where as Pakistan�s about 300 million dollars! Its more like comparing Mexican IT exports to that of USA�s, if you ask me!

In fairness, Pakistan�s IT industry is growing fast, which is also benefiting from the outsourcing model, but the process has been delayed in Pakistan with its political instability, lack of a proper democracy and for the extremism that exists with in the country.

I believe, if you were to take an unbiased analysis of statistics, Pakistan is at least a decade behind the India when it comes to software exports and IT services.

Back on the main topic, I don't think Java is declining, but because of the boom, bubble and burst, there are more Java coders out there, which is not making things easy.

[Mcgill Smith]

Ashok Mash your source is outdated
FRIDAY JUNE 16 2000

[Arjun Shastry]

Its around $30-60 million per annum for the last 5 years.
See the full report here (dated Dec 2004)
I think there are many reasons why growth is relatively limited eventhough education level is higher and poverty level is much less than India's.

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by Mcgill Smith:
Ashok Mash your source is outdated
FRIDAY JUNE 16 2000

Indeed. Here's 2003-2004 statistics.

Source

MUMBAI: The IT industry in India is poised to touch $15.5 billion during 2003-04, which would represent a growth of 27 per cent compared to the previous year which was $12.2 billion. This was announced by Nasscom, prior to the beginning of its annual industry conference, Nasscom 2004.

Source

Waqar Butt, Director International Marketing, PSEB said that this would have a positive effect on the local industry. He expressed the firm belief that Pakistan would make its own market in the software industry and that it had the necessary talent and manpower to achieve that. He said that Pakistan software exports this year touched 33 million dollars, which is a 45% increase over the last year and he expects this to rise by another 50% by next year.

In short, Pakistan's IT export is around $33 million dollars where as India's is above $15 billion, which is what, 450 times bigger?

[Hussein Baghdadi]

Why the days of Java are numbered ?
why you don't say the same thing for VB ? VB developers supposed to use C# instead but they are still using VB...

[Jeroen Wenting]

and how much bigger is the population of India?

And more importantly the number of people involved in IT in India compared to those in Pakistan?

Remember also that where projects are offshored differs by country.

Over here a lot of people loose their jobs to Pakistan and Malaysia, with Indonesia and South Africa coming in 3rd and 4th (SA especially for callcenters and helpdesks as they speak more or less the same language we do).
Far less jobs go to India.
In the Netherlands SAP is said to mean "software aus Pakistan" (software from Pakistan) because so many implementation projects are offshored to that country (and many of them ultimately end in disaster but that's another story). Many people even think SAP is a Pakistani company (they are German).

[Ashok Mash]

Pakistan's population is around 160 million where as India's is about a billion. Thats 6.5 times more. More interesting fact is the difference in GDP - Pakistan's $318 billion compared to India's $3 trillion - ten times bigger.

What I am trying to point out is, the difference in population is 6 times, and difference in GDP 10 times, but the difference in income from Software Exports & IT services is around 60 times! I am sure you can see it�s not very proportionate with rest of the differences. Hence my first argument, no offence to Pakistanis, its a growing market, but as of today its a fraction of Indian IT industry.

Now, you personal experience, of SAP projects outsourced to Pakistan looks more like a very regional situation to me. I have never heard of a SAP project outsourced to Pakistan, but that�s just me, and I don't claim to know it all. Ireland is a lot smaller than Netherlands, but both Ireland and Netherlands are really tiny compared to the rest of the IT market, and I don't think generalising something very local to Netherlands would work.

Sources: CIA World Factbook pages on India, Pakistan and Netherlands

[Ben Ethridge]

If java is truly declining, and its days are numbered, what, then, is replacing it?

I'll bet my career that it won't be C.

Ben

[Kishore Dandu]

Originally posted by Ben Ethridge:
If java is truly declining, and its days are numbered, what, then, is replacing it?

I'll bet my career that it won't be C.

Ben

At least people who work in stuff like ERP(SAP, Peoplesoft) make tons more money than in J2EE world. That is my practical observation in USA.

[Jeroen Wenting]

Originally posted by Ben Ethridge:
If java is truly declining, and its days are numbered, what, then, is replacing it?

I'll bet my career that it won't be C.

Ben

oh, you know...
In a few years there will be no more programmers. Business analysts will just click on some icons on a screen to link their businessrules together, then push a button and a complete and perfect application will be created.

It was after all promised several years ago that this would be the way applications are created within a decade...

Therefore there will be no more programming languages at all.

And he who believes that is the same kind of person believing that Java is dead (or Cobol, or C, or any language which is told to be dead every other week).

[peter wooster]

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
oh, you know...
In a few years there will be no more programmers. Business analysts will just click on some icons on a screen to link their businessrules together, then push a button and a complete and perfect application will be created.

It was after all promised several years ago that this would be the way applications are created within a decade...

Therefore there will be no more programming languages at all.

And he who believes that is the same kind of person believing that Java is dead (or Cobol, or C, or any language which is told to be dead every other week).

Of course, it's true, that's exactly what they said when Fortran and Cobol were introduced. Science and Business would no longer need these annoying overpaid programmers, when you can just write up your rules in plain English and let the computer do the rest.

[Ben Ethridge]

I personally see no language replacing java in the near future. I think one can usually predict a language's downturn when it is no longer being taught in colleges.

Ben

[Ashok Mash]

IMHO, as with everything else, choices are almost always good, and it will help us use the right tool at the right place. Just like Java is unlikely to entirely replace C from its stronghold (device-level firmware etc), there will be no reason to replace Java from certain areas that its good at � enterprise level, back-end architecture. New languages, like Python would become more popular, and will replace inefficient languages or features (applets for example). Even after a new language evolves and proves itself better than Java, the availability of cheap Java expertise will also keep existing Java projects going for a very long time.