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Comment by jcoffey | Hacker News Reader

I know there's a lot of Java jobs out there, but there's also a whole lot of Java programmers. Would it not be a smarter move to learn something like Scala over Java? I'm trying to gauge where the demand will be in a few years rather than pander to the current job market. I'm also trying to increase my value rather than my general applicability if that makes any sense?

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I can imagine a world where companies have Java legacy code but build new software in Scala to (1) ensure interoperability b/w legacy and new code on the JVM, and (2) give developers a language with more options (functional-style code, REPL)

A lot of companies in SF & NY (Yammer, Twitter, 4sq, for example) use Scala. These cities are pretty cutting-edge in language choice, and I'd imagine these practices will expand geographically as devs migrate to new places.

I'm interning at Knewton, and we have this posted up on our jobs page:

http://jobs.knewton.com/apply/xYwHXb/Software-Engineer-Scala...

and Twitter has this listing:

https://twitter.com/jobs/positions?jvi=ospeWfwL,Job

Good luck!

It's near impossible job to predict any trend in technology with a time frame of 5 years or so. You may find a programming language that might pickup two years from now and that might rule the world in five years. So I take it easy with current situation in hand.

A good way to find trend in books about a programming language and github/google code like sites. So going for Scala now may to give you any advantage in the next 5 years or so.

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