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Comment by LaserToy | Hacker News Reader

Java is not hyped because it is a tool. Like a microscope, it just does what it supposed to do.

IMO, if you want to get a descent job in a large company working on backend systems, you want to learn: Java, C/C++ or recently Go. You will be able to build pretty much anything, from a micro service to self driving car.

If you want to stick to startups, you can do well with anything else till it growth, experienced engineers are hired and rewrite it in one of those languages.

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The "learn Go" part always puzzles me. In a city of 15 million (Buenos Aires), I can find about ~3 jobs for Go, but ~800 for Java. Clearly Go isn't going to be paying anyones bills anytime soon. At least not in this part of the world.

I always refused to work with C++/Java, and I managed to get a job with Rust at FAANG. If I can do it, you can do it :P

Why would any reasonable person limit their choices based on a tool? Rust or Blast - whatever

I really don’t care what language I’m using if it it doing the job. I use Java, Java Script, Go, Python, Scala when appropriate.

Because it is most likely not your choice.

Mastering a more powerful tool prepares me for more appealing roles solving harder problems. Time spent on a weak tool is just wasted; it'll never get better and neither will I.

Java has become reasonable though I'd always reach first for Scala or Kotlin (maybe Clojure?) I'd like to work with Rust but it seems hard for an employer to cost-justify the dev work to avoid paying for G1.

Because some of these tools bring more joy or despair than others. A worker is only but his tools.

It is matter of perception. All tools suck in some ways, all codebases are have bad stuff (except toy projects of obsessed perfectionists). We just deal with it :)

You just asked "Why would any reasonable person care what they spent half of their waking hours of their life doing?"

The fact that you don't care does not make everyone other than you not a reasonable person.

Frankly I don't see how any reasonable person could fail to develop some preferences, but I bet you would not like it if I called you unreasonable, or perhaps just unsophisticated.

Because preferences are based on emotions are not rational.

I’m talking about picking a tool that does the job according to the requirements (speed, memory, debuggability), not based on what some YouTuber said.

We are engineers and paid for results. It help with carrier to embrace it.

I care about security and Java code is unreadable, extremely verbose, extremely bloated. I don't see a single situation where Java is a more appropriate language than something else.

So, you are stating that Java language is not applicable to any situation.

Here is one: there is a database written in Java and you need to implement more features. There is 10000000 lines of code in the companies source and new code should be the same. I can go on and on.

Personal advice - if you want growth, drop preferences. When FAANG interviews nobody even asking what is your preferred language as nobody cares.

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