Ask HN: Is Java a wise career investment?

Hello,

I have been working for close to 2 1/2 years as a Java developer, and seeing all the job postings on HN as of late, I have been wondering if it is wise to keep learning and investing in Java or if I should consider broadening my horizons by learning other programming languages(I have dabbled a bit in Python and Ruby so far).

Since this question is quite dependent on geographic & economic context, I will provide some more detail. I am living in Romania, and have no plans of relocating. Currently the local job market has a lot of Java openings since enterprise clients from Western Europe are sending their projects to us to reduce development costs. How long this trend will last is quite uncertain, and this makes me wonder if Java is a worthwhile investment.

I have been considering starting to freelance but Java doesn't really seem to be the language in demand. The same goes for doing remote work for companies from outside my country.

I will also mention that I have a CS degree, so I know the universal theory behind programming like OOP, design patterns, algorithms etc.

So, in conclusion what would the kind people here at HN recommend? Sticking with Java, or switching to some more in demand language?

i don't think java as a language is a better investment than others however java as an ecosystem is.

jvm is expanding, concurrency and scalability is more important than ever and jvm can provide you these tools. you can learn about jvm optimization, languages like groovy and scala, web frameworks like grails and play.

and of course a little bit of python and ruby won't hurt. :)

very big +1! But not only languages, techniques like TDD, BDD and so on, concepts like prototyping and frameworks.

Try to learn Android and you raise your market value multifold. I would however though learn a scripting language to have a complementary skill-set and put a framework on top of that. I'd recommend Ruby --> Ruby on Rails.

Java is a good thing to know, but I suspect that Java-the-language may not have a massive future. It's pretty telling that some of the major java IDE developers are also pushing their own JVM languages (eclipse: Xtend, jetbrains: Kotlin).

There's some interesting stuff going on in other JVM languages, I'm particularly interested in Scala and Clojure.

I think you've provided yourself with an excellent starting point having learnt java, but it would be a bad idea to stop there.