I doubt Java is going away soon, primarily because of Android. So long as Android exists, and uses Java as its main language, Java jobs aren't going anywhere.

My personal opinion on Java: it sucks

But from a job market perspective, it is still a strong player. While it has lost the web market, it is still the core language for Android apps and has a decent embedded market

Java is strong but conservative. Many would argue conservative to a fault. In general it is a very stable and consistent platform with few unexpected surprises.

Most all of my major work has been written in Java or C#. I haven't had the luxury of playing with a version of Java past 7, so I know I'm missing out on some of the very cool features that C# has had for a while. However, when it comes to a platform and environment as a whole, .Net by comparison doesn't have a lot to offer that Java doesn't already have in triplicate. And Java has sane data structures in its built-in library that .Net still oddly lacks.

Nevertheless, as far as employment goes, Java is totally worth your time. Furthermore, nearly all Java skills are translatable to C# (by design). Double the value!

There will be Java jobs for a long time to come.

Hell, PHP is dead and there are still people hiring. You'll see the same thing with Java. But, the language is ageing. People don't use Java because it's a good idea. They use it because everyone else is jumping off the cliff.

In 10 years we'll regard Java exactly the same as we regard Brittney Spears. I mean, who the fuck is Brittney Spears?

Java is said to be the new COBOL. It is a rather hot language with a number of advantages, not the least of which being its inherent portability in its ecosystem, which actually allows a lot of other languages to be built to emit bytecode compatible with it. You are not really wed to the language itself.

In terms of the language specifically, I hesitate to say 'it sucks' because although it has a number of very annoying quirks, it's still C-like and I don't buy into a lot of the languages that do things "correctly" but make thinking and working in them far more difficult. However, it does leave much to be desired, and is naturally expected to be a "Java developer."

I'm not sure how much of a future it has for desktop applications, though. Common advice for home users is to not install Java for fear that it will cause a dangerous exploit. IMO those fears are somewhat overblown, but not baseless. The few Java compilers that claim to produce "native" code (e.g. Excelsior JET) have plenty of junk in the trunk, e.g. a 1 MB .exe file with 80 MB worth of .dll's dragged around. Others that produce EXEs, to my knowledge, tend to basically just cram a JVM in with the bytecode, which produces elephantine executables without a real performance advantage. Additionally Java has bestowed its programs with the gift of ridiculous bloat, unless you nail down the memory configuration hard. It may be good for the Java application if the JVM seizes 1 GB of heap, but it sucks for everything else on the machine, especially if a ton of it goes unused and the garbage collector seems indifferent to the problem. Additionally, the common refrain is that Swing sucks. I don't know enough about JavaFX to comment, but the fact that it isn't in OpenJDK (AFAIK) seriously hurts it, because things that are not in Oracle's grasp are good for Java.

Honestly, the greatest threat to Java's survival is Oracle. They have chronically shown themselves to be a ruthless, destructive, short-sighted corporation, and IMO one of the main reasons Java has much of a future is OpenJDK meaning that developers are not inherently connected to the stock JRE/JDK. The two markets keeping Java in one piece are corporate server-type applications and Android, and Oracle is more than happy to not only bite the hand that feeds them (Google), but attempt to sever and devour the arm and any other parts they can get their mits on.

Despite whatever Oracle may do, Java is highly unlikely to go away for a very long time, not unlike COBOL, especially since (or so I am told) a lot of it runs on mainframes, which are still in use in large corporations for important "never-go-down" tasks, and they have a selling point of backwards compatibility into the 1960s. If I were you, I'd go for it. Even if you don't use it, if you're not experienced with programming, learning another language can give you a better perspective for future projects.

if nothing else you’ll learn to appreciate more modern languages :)

My opinion, as well as everyone else's, is fairly meaningless. Google for the "TIOBE Programming Index." Java's market share continues to be overwhelming, and after a few years of some declines (as with most of the top 10) largely due to PHP's influence, it's on the rise again. It made 2015's 'Language of the year.'

From their site: The TIOBE Programming Community index is an indicator of the popularity of programming languages. The index is updated once a month. The ratings are based on the number of skilled engineers world-wide, courses and third party vendors. Popular search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo!, Wikipedia, Amazon, YouTube and Baidu are used to calculate the ratings.

So... currently and for the foreseeable future, a VERY solid skillset in which to invest if you're looking to be (and stay) employed.

Strong, black, Colombian, medium roast. Delicious.

Java is fast at runtime and easily portable across many operating systems. It fits a niche that will make it extremely difficult to replace.

In my own work, I prefer to develop in JAVA and build the "absolutely must be fast" parts in C++. I mix them together with JNI. Its the best way to balance development time and run time.

Seriously though, JAVA is a pain in the dick.

We've had more open Java developer positions than developers for seven years and running! They're in high demand.

Thank you all for the friendly comments! I'm taking the course.

Java and C# have basically identical syntax. C# isn't going away unless Microsoft does, and Java isn't going away unless Android does. Definitely a language worth learning.