what's the future? JAVA or ANDROID?

[Rajkumar Katudia]

I am a JAVA developer based out of Bangalore. I have 6 yrs of experience in java/j2ee development. I was just wondering about android and its future. Would it be a good choice as a career?

How about learning curve? how long I might take to learn it? How easy would it be for a regular java/j2ee developer to switch over to andriod? How about the pay package? Should I know Android before hand or would companies be ready to hire and train me?

Any other similar/related information is welcome.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

You can't compare Java and Android. Java is used for many things including server side applications. Android is a mobile technology. Which needs to talk to a server something using a non-Android language.

Also, you can't have a career in one language. Things change too frequently. I think you mean would Android be useful for your career rather than as a career.

With anything, it is a plus if you have some familiarity with a language that you want to work with. If I have to choose between someone who developed a toy Android app, someone who has read a book or someone who just showed up, which one do you think I would choose?

[Ulf Dittmer]

Also, you can't have a career in one language. Things change too frequently.

+1. Java didn't exist when I got my first IT job, and I suspect it will no longer be used seriously when I retire. So your education had better prepare you to switch between languages and technologies.

Android is a mobile technology. Which needs to talk to a server something using a non-Android language.

Not really - Android is perfectly happy to exist stand-alone without communicating to anything.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Ulf Dittmer wrote:

Android is a mobile technology. Which needs to talk to a server something using a non-Android language.

Not really - Android is perfectly happy to exist stand-alone without communicating to anything.

True. I'm thinking of apps that communicate with the outside world. I can't imagine having a job around a system that doesn't need to communicate with others. Even games communicate with the high score server. (I know there are some apps that don't communicate with others.)

[Rajkumar Katudia]

Thanks alot Guys for the responses and suggestions.

I wanted to know if it is a good option to switch to "full time android developer"?

How does the future look?

Or is it good to be a better java/j2ee developer?


I mean would you advise me to invest time, effort and money in becoming an android developer or improve my skills as JAVA/J2EE developer?

[Ulf Dittmer]

It can't hurt to learn Android, and since it's based on Java it's not like your Java skills would deteriorate. Whether you should take it up full-time depends on what you're interested in and other factors that we can't really advise on. The mobile world is certainly faster-paced then the desktop and server worlds, so you'd need to spend more time staying up-to-date.

[esam kan]

i don't think anybody know for sure. even the biggest experts don't know.

[Prasad Saya]

I started learning Android application development few months back - just for learning. The programming language used to develop is Java and since last year one has the option of using Kotlin for Android app programming.

I think its a good skill to have. Lately, applications have a mobile component to them (in addition to desktop and web). It makes a good complementary skill. Routinely organizations are looking for resources with skills including Android. If one has some Java programing experience its quite easy to learn Android app development. Also, there are lots of resources available in various formats. And, good online documentation.

It was fun to learn and challenging to design/develop an app for and within such a small real estate (of a mobile device).

I did a online/video based course conducted by Google and Udacity and it was a free and self paced. I did find it engaging and with examples and basic concepts explained well. One needs to invest time. Well, there are paid and tutored courses too.

[sonai kale]

Java is not the best language to do anything BUT with Java you could do everything and anything. Great yes. Android framework was developed in C++ but Android application's​ are develop in Java. Your question itself is ambiguous. Hope you got it now. All the best and cheers.

[Campbell Ritchie]

sonai kale wrote:. . . with Java you could do everything and anything. . . .

Not convinced about that; I would hate to try writing operating systems in Java®.

[Tim Holloway]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:

sonai kale wrote:. . . with Java you could do everything and anything. . . .

Not convinced about that; I would hate to try writing operating systems in Java®.

WebLogic/BEA/Oracle had no such problem.

Actually, the Prime Operating System (Primos) was almost entirely written in Fortran. A bunch of disaffected Honeywell employees set out on their own using an OS developed for NASA and designed custom hardware to run it - optimized for Fortran. This was back when your tax dollars spent meant that you as a taxpayer were entitled to a copy of government-contracted works instead of paying the contractor to develop it then paying the contractor again to license it.

Honeywell later developed their own minicomputer line and while I don't think the OS was actually written in COBOL, it probably could have been.

Then of course, there are the famous LISP machines.

And the Amiga Exec which was written almost entirely in Green Hills C, but could have been just as easily been written (or more so) in Lattice C++.

One of the more controversial things that Fred Brooks asserted in his seminal The Mythical Man-Month was that operating systems had no business being written in low-level (especially assembly) languages. IBM believed him enough to develop the PL/S language for in-house OS development work.

You might think that running under a JVM precludes writing an OS in Java, but in actuality, neither the Prime nor IBM System/370 computers had instructions that operated on the raw hardware - they ran in microcode. The original 8-inch floppy disk was used in some IBM models to hold the microcode, and the process of loading it into microcode store before IPL was known as IMPL (Initial Microcode Processor Loading). That's why if you look at the hardware instruction set for 8 and 5-inch floppies you'll find some odd characteristics that make a lot more sense if you understand that IBM disk drives of the day did not have fixed sector sizes and had a hardware key search feature.

As a semi-joke several years back, I made my own IMPL. It was actually a copy of DSL (Damn Small Linux) with the Hercules mainframe emulator on a 3-inch mini-CD. I had some old Pentium boxes, and all you had to do was pop the disk in, power up, and it would present itself as a full-grown IBM System/370, including green-screen terminals, system consoles, a card reader/punch and line printer(s) plus DASD and tape drives. You could then IPL from a virtual tape or disk (or a real one, if you happened to own one) and it was effectively no different from a room-filling water-chilled S/370 Model 168. Well, hardware advances being what they have been, it was probably [i]faster[/b] than an IBM S/370 Model 168. And without the plumbing.