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If Java Wasn't Cool 10 Years Ago, What About Now?

Posted by timothy on from the pretty-good-drink-especially-with-honey-and-cream dept.

10 years ago today on this site, readers answered the question "Why is Java considered un-cool?" 10 years later, Java might not be hip, but it's certainly stuck around. (For slightly more than 10 years, it's been the basis of the Advanced Placement test for computer science, too, which means that lots of American students are exposed to Java as their first formally taught language.) And for most of that time, it's been (almost entirely) Free, open source software, despite some grumbling from Oracle. How do you see Java in 2014? Are the pessimists right?

1 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I don't care about Java by buddyglass · · Score: 5, Informative

    Also worth noting is that the downward trend in Java's market share is mirrored by downward trends in the share of other "highly popular" languages. This possibly indicates the market is becoming more diverse. TIOBE's chart goes back to June 2001, which, according to their numbers, is the high water mark for Java at 26.5%. In that month the shares for C and C++ were 20.2% and 14.2% respectively. In August 2014 Java had declined to 15.0%. C and C++ declined to 16.4% and 4.7% respectively. Woe is C++. In fact, of the top ten languages in 2014 the only ones to gain market share over the past year are Javascript and Objective-C. Javascript has been more or less flat; Objective-C spiked earlier this year but has since dropped back to 2013 levels.

    Python? Peaked in February 2011 when it reached 7.0% in TIOBE's index. It's currently sitting at 3.1% in August 2014.

    Ruby? Peaked at 4.0% in December 2008. Currently at 1.2% in August 2014.

    I can't get info on Scala, Go, Haskell, Scheme, Erlang, Groovy, et. al. because they aren't used widely enough for TIOBE to even report stats.