[Trisquel-users] Should I ignore learning Java and other programming languages that use the Java virtual machine (JVM)?

[h***@protonmail.com]

Hello again!
Dear friends, thank you so much for your helps. I really learned a lot from
you.
I read a article: "Free but Shackled - The Java Trap" by Richard Stallman in
here: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
question 1) Whats your opinion about languages like Java, Scala, Clojure that
uses JVM? Are these languages non-free?

question 2) I have a road map to become a back end web developer:
Python - Ruby - Rust - Erlang - Elixir
Do you suggest learning these languages? Are these languages is free(libre)?

For example, after reading this topic:
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/haskell-trisquel
I decided not to use Haskell language.

Sorry if my questions are too stupid, but it's very important for me!
Best wishes...

[s***@gmail.com]

I worked as web-developer about 15 years and can give you a quick review
about language and industry.


Haskell
First of all about Haskell. It was my misunderstanding. There nothing wrong
about Haskell in freedom terms. But Haskell is more academic languages and
there are aren't much jobs there. In my opinion Haskell is more like hobby
language.

Java
Java today is mostly used in large enterprise and also banks love Java. Small
company avoids Java due to price of development and project-scaling. About
99% websites are small and Java is overkill for it. Development becomes too
expensive. If you are going to work in large enterprise then you need to
learn it. Once I got some job offers from Banks who started refactoring their
old system written in C++ to Java. Kotlin, Scala Clojure aren't also popular
and they looks like over-hyped thing like Ruby was in 2006 see below. Java
contains a lot of non-free stuff.

Ruby
I don't recommend to learn Ruby novadays. It's hype is passed. I remember
Ruby-mania in 2006-2008 where everybody was crazy about Ruby and
Ruby-on-rails. Today very rarely somebody starts new project in Ruby[on
Rails]. At job you will probably will support legacy systems which are once
written in Ruby.

Rust, Erlang, Elixir.
Cannot say much about that they aren't so popular and also not too much jobs
there.

Python
Looks promising people slowly stated to Python web-development and started
very slowly and carefully replace PHP stuff. I also like Python it is
logical, simple languages. But it has one big flaw. It's performance is
almost same slow as Ruby.

PHP
It's a still giant-bastard which controls more that 60-70% of the web, read
Wordpress, Drupal (Trisquel website also Drupal), Joomala, Sroomla and other
crap. PHP never dies, too many shit code already is written in PHP for
decades. It will be forever in web :) And you will always can have bread on
the table doing PHP. But it's codebase extremely crappy.

JavaScript/NodeJS
JS is the most shitty programming language ever made, some moments are
absolutely illogical, languages design is a huge mess, where Number is not a
number, funcions are object, object are functions and arrays etc. This is the
most over-hyped languages today and every kid today writes in JS. Actually JS
is the reason why I finally left web-development profession. The industry
because extreme mess of crappy frameworks, packages, not needed tools,
bastard syntax, a lot of kids. If you want to quickly make money you can jump
onto this hype trends. But you will every month new framework and new tool. I
think JS is non-free by it's nature.

Today web-development in general extremely unstable and messy area, where I
don't want to anymore. It's completely f**ked up.

[h***@protonmail.com]

Great tips, thanks a lot...
I was going to learn php language, but I heard so bad things from the
programmers that I gave up :) for example:
PHP syntax is ugly and not easy to maintain.
PHP is not like a language like Python, and ...

[s***@gmail.com]

Modern PHP isn't so bad as it's described. Agree that older versions of PHP
were absolutely awful. Today it's pretty nice language. Problem of the PHP
that it has huge crappy written code-base behind and army of unprofessional
programmers.

In my opinion JavaScript is **much more** confused than PHP. Today situation
in JS world is much worse than in PHP. Around JS a lot of hypists, cool kids,
marketers, amateurs who write code and have absolutely no idea about: data
structures, algorithms, optimizations etc. There are good JS programmers, but
too few of them. Also released another Bastard languages from Microsoft
TypeScript. Which transpiles shitty language into another shitty language.
For me enough, sorry, by web-dev.

If I was young today and started to do web-dev. I'd choose Python. It is just
my opinion.

[s***@gmail.com]

Anyway web-dev is good area if you need quickly earn money. I was in same
situation where I was very needed money when I was around 20. So I learn
HTML+CSS+JS+PHP and started to earn. But will be quickly overwhelmed by
annoying clients, stupid people, marketing etc.

I talk with my colleagues who also work long time in web-dev industry, most
of the are leaving. And go to own business, education, management, same Java
enterprise etc. Almost everybody disappointed with today's industry. Today
making websites aren't so cool as it was about even 10-15 years ago. You have
much to learn everyday (I got funny case, I started to learn AngularJS, when
I learn new hype frameworks came to stage ReactJS and everybody started to
use it in industry and forgot about Angular), but old-school people already
have own families, children, other problems. Old school web-devs are mostly
35+ yo. and they simply don't have time to spend 1-2 hours everyday for
learning new stuff which is constantly comes to play with huge speed.

[Patrick]

This post is going to start a massive flame war. Better move the
moderators into position now.

I don't want it to continue but I also can't resist adding to it as I
love this sort of topic.

Please seriously consider COBOL. I love GnuCOBOL. So many things still
run on COBOL and the developers are retiring. There is a shortage emerging.

[l***@dcc.ufmg.br]

As wriiten as a headnote of https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/java-trap.html
"the Java language as such is no longer a trap" (since 2006).

As I wrote in reply of https://trisquel.info/forum/haskell-trisquel "I am not
aware of any freedom issue with tools around Haskell".