34
P3t3r6
7y

So, a friend of mine just called me and asked what is it that I do in programming, and if I knew Java, because her stepfather owns a company, and they're currently hiring. Since she's not a tech person, I answered "basically, websites", but the stepfather was asking something else in the background, and she couldn't understand what the heck he was saying, so she put me on the phone with him.
I then explained, I do all kinds of web related stuff, from simple HTML single page sites, to WordPress themes and whatever, so I know PHP, Javascript, and all that crap.
And then, he asks me this wonderful question:
"And programming languages... ?", as in "do you know any?"
... I was like... Wut?...
I mean, I see where he's coming from. He probably meant compiled languages or something, but still... I felt like screaming at him "WEB DEVELOPERS ARE REAL PROGRAMMERS AND DESERVE SOME LOVE TOO YOU KNOW?! 😢"

I decided to go with a "nah, not compiled languages, no..."

Comments
  • 17
    You must be doing some good amount of programming with that wordpress. hmm....
  • 8
    You should go learn some, it's a quite refreshing side hobby. Try go-lang for OOP feeling or C for some low-level Arduino or done other micro controller for a good hardware feeling. A couple of days of playing around and you'll not feel like your answers are inadequate. But avoid Java it's a dying breed, also I can recommend to avoid languages related to proprietary platforms like Swift and c# , the communities are filled with confused noobs, bad documentation and old farts that have lived a shielded life, boxed in by which ever company unleashed the evil upon our world.
  • 7
    Dude. Keep going. You're an awesome developer. Keep programing. If they pay you to do WordPress themes in CSS you do it. You don't dislike it a lot and you're good at it. There are gonna be people that r gonna say php it's programming and html it's not worth to learn but we'll need it in web development
  • 2
    @tahnik Don't get me wrong, but I love my web stack x) and I do way more than SPAs and WordPress themes ... But as a freelancer, that's what I get to do, and use...
    I do have side projects, I do use other things like Laravel, or Node for example. Javascript is a world.
    The thing is, just because a language is interpreted instead of compiled, it doesn't make it less of a language, nor me, less of a programmer ... The same with WordPress. Why should I build a complete CMS every time a client needs a website with some dynamic content?... It's kind of a waste of time... And yes, you still need to know how to code to do something decent with WordPress.
  • 0
    @fuckinghipsters Thanks for the tips! I've looked at Go recently, and it sparked some interest. But still, as I said in the above comment, I prefer interpreted langs. I don't know why... I've started with web, went through VB, C# and some others, and ended up doing web (related stuff) again... I just like it :)
  • 0
    @P3t3r6 that's the thing dude, nobody is really discriminating the high level languages more than yourself. See the world of programming and get some perspective, and then you can be proud instead that you know how to do stuff without overcomplicating every detail and driving projects into the ground like the enterprise world.
  • 1
    @P3t3r6 oops posted to soon. I getcha, my favorite interpreted language is Ruby. The pry debugger that's available in rubygems is so amazing that I'm spoiled for life. No more echos or prints ever again.
  • 4
    @fuckinghipsters Java is a dying breed? Based on what fact exactly? Last year Java developers was the most sought out and best paid.
  • 1
    The modern implementation of JavaScript is JIT compiled, so it's close enough in my book.
  • 0
    @fuckinghipsters wouldn't say it's dying, but it is definitely cancer and does have allot of old farts who don't want to do anything else than java
  • 2
    @fuckinghipsters where did you get info about Java that it's dying? Give me some links to it, please. Thanks!
  • 3
    @positivealex @aaxa he had a bad dream yesterday. And Java was dying in it
  • 1
    @tahnik That would make sense. Otherwise it would be nonsense
  • 0
    @aaxa that's the whole point, demand is high because supply is low. nobody with an interest in development wants to play with your Java EE and hibernate XML files. Alot of unemployed people with no prior interest in technology jump onto the Java train today just to have something to do (and get good salaries). But it's a dying technology, the signs are all there.
  • 3
    @fuckinghipsters That's pretty much the same as what you said before. Bring me proof that it's dying. Where I live it is widely used, and from experience, people making statements like yours are more ignorant than informed. I'm interested in a lot of languages and I see pros and cons about them all. However, I find it ignorant and plain stupid (especially here where logic and facts are dominant) to doom a language to death because of "signs". Give me some good proof and I'll happily agree. But I'll tell you that I've had this discussion a dozen of times, and I'm yet to be proven wrong.
  • 1
    "demand is high because supply is low"...slow clap
  • 1
    @aaxa it doesn't keep up with the times, it only in recent years received Gradle as a sort of normalizer for dev environments and half sane build tool. But it's still misses a sane package manager as since last time I checked there is no way to just add a public git URL as library dependency. Maven is total crap as you depend on precompiled binares with no guaranteed reference back to the source. Basically you always end up doing more for less in Java, and even if the binares you compile are by some miracle still portable then the chances of your project being compiled on someone's else's computer are even more slim. Java only thrives on big companies with huge legacies or projects with vertical scaling demands. And ofcourse Android. But still Java is an ancient dinosaur feeds off tall money trees in order to survive. #notreesnodinosaurs
  • 3
    @fuckinghipsters Some of your points are quite valid.
    However, it sounds like you are imagining the use of Java on every kind of project you might want to do. A master craftsman doesn't choose a hammer to cut his wood. You choose the right tool for the job. I happen to know quite a lot of bankers and people from the insurance industry, and all those companies have their software build mainly in Java because of the solid and stable language it is for the tasks they need to solve. So a dead language? No, not at all. Are Java developers becoming a more rare breed? Maybe. But does it matter really? I like Java because it feels solid but I would definitely not choose it for every job.
  • 1
    @aaxa I'm inclined to agree with you on those points. And would have completely if go-lang wasn't growing each day. I suspect that go-lang is going to replace Java in that rock solid field during the coming decennium. I mean I'm not totally anti Java, Android and Java SE can be quite entertaining, but we have so many better alternatives today in all other areas that it's hard to imagine how Java is going to keep up.
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