You probably haven’t realized, but that Java extension you downloaded onto your Windows ’95 computer approximately 20 years ago is responsible for almost 9,000,000 jobs across the world today. And with the average salary of a Java Developer being in the neighborhood of $70,013, the time has never been better to know a computer language.
Today, no sector of the economy is moving as fast as technology as innovations occur every day, and new companies are springing up seemingly overnight. These new companies, and new jobs that are stemming from these innovations in technology, require a new set of skills to make the modern workplace buzz.
Java’s role in the future
Although the future is wrought with uncertainty and unknowns, there are several things that we know will continue no matter what happens. Space exploration, the connectedness of devices, and robotics are all equally viewed as pillars of the technological revolution. Each contributing to one another and pushing the limits of human ingenuity to the absolute limits. The similarities go beyond superficial observations, however; they each use Java.
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NASA
Since landing on the moon in 1969, the National Aeronautics and Space Administrations (NASA) has developed some of the most ubiquitous technologies we use in today’s society. Ballpoint pens, velcro, and water filters are all used by Americans every single day and were all developed because of our thirst for space travel.
Their use of Java has led to some incredible innovations. Take for example the Software Development Kit, World Wind, an application that lets zoom-in on the Earth from space to examine the earth. Since its release, over 90 applications have been built using the open source package.
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Internet of Things
Unless you don’t have access to the Internet, you’ve heard about the Internet of Things. We’ve talked in the past right here on this blog about the viability of Java as it relates to the Internet of Things. What you may not have known is that it’s already possible to create your own IoT applications using Java and products such as SunSPOT.
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Innovations in robotics
Robotics has its roots deeply entrenched, and completely reliant on for that matter, in the world of computer programming languages. Today, a host of computer programming languages are used in robotics including Assembly, Basic, C/C++, .NET Python. Java is considered more modern than most of these languages, particularly C, and it provides myriad safety features making it one of the safest and best languages to use when first starting out.
