Thread: Future of Java

I would strongly recommend learning Java. Even if Oracle decides to stop adding to Java, it will still probably be a very usable language. I'm not sure about certification, but even if you decide not to use Java, it is a great language for learning object-oriented programming concepts, and is very similar to C/C++, probably the two most used languages (behind COBOL, but that's because the finance industry is backwards and doesn't want to change).

There's also the OpenJDK project, which Sun started about a year or so ago to try and make Java open source. I don't think Java is going to die anytime soon

Oracle is a huge player in the database vendor world, soo them sticking to java garantees that there will be java jobs in the future. IBM's db family also works perfectly well with java, so in the database world java is better covered than anyone else. Database programming constitutes a huge part of programming jobs.

Also, google seems to favor java. I dont have any statements supporting that, but all their free dev software packeges and services uses java (gwt, google app engine). So there is another huge player on the java side.

My guess, java will keep its dominant position as programming language for now.

Also this site can be used for some subjective info, link: Programming Language Popularity

Nothing will happen to Java. Oracle's entire e-business suite (the primary money maker for Oracle, not their database) is built on java. Oracle has been using java for more than 5 years and is very heavily invested in it's success. This is the primary reason why Oracle buying Sun is a smart deal for Oracle.