What Languages and Data Formats Should Java Developers Know?

[deep anvil]

I'm looking for a precise answer about languages and markup/data languages that are commonly used alongside Java or are closely related to Java ecosystem .

So far, I know about Kotlin and Apache Groovy as languages, as well as SQL, XML, JSON, and YAML, which Java developers frequently work with.

Are there any other important languages, for scripting or markup/configuration languages that Java devs commonly use and that would be worth noting?

If im not wrong, Java can build for any platforms: Web, Mobile, Desktop, CLI based.

Thanks

[scarlet geyser]

<@&987246964494204979> please have a look, thanks.

Here is an AI assisted attempt to answer your question 🤖. Maybe it helps! In any case, a human is on the way 👍. To continue talking to the AI, you can use </chatgpt:1108714622413963314>.

TJ-Bot

I'm looking for a precise answer about languages and markup/data languages that are commonly used alongside Java or are closely related to Java ecosystem <:duke_thumbs_up:1461413445978292264> . So far, I know about **Kotlin** and **Apache Groovy** as lang

Java developers typically work with a core set of languages and data formats that complement the Java ecosystem:

Languages:

• Java: Obviously the main language.
• Kotlin & Scala: Modern JVM languages interoperable with Java, popular in certain contexts.
• Groovy: Dynamic language on JVM, widely used for scripting and build automation (e.g., Gradle).

Markup/Data Formats:

• XML: Historically very significant for configuration (Spring, Maven).
• JSON: Ubiquitous for APIs and data interchange; libraries like Jackson and Gson are common.
• YAML: Gaining traction for configuration (Spring Boot, Kubernetes manifests).
• Properties files: Classic format for configuration.

These languages and formats are most commonly encountered in Java projects and tooling.

---

Useful links:

• Oracle Java Tutorials: Other Languages on the JVM
• Baeldung: Java and JSON
• Spring Framework: External Configuration Files

- AI generated response using gpt-4.1-mini model

[fallen birch]

Besides markdown, which is very easy to pick up and it useful for writing lightweight-yet-structured documents, I've seen SpEL used a handful of times inside of our spring apis.
Also, knowing bash is useful for scripting.

Just pick up stuff as you need it and keep building

[fervent nacelle]

pl/sql, markdown

or pg/sql

xml, but the javafx tags

env file

nginx config

bash and systemd format

docker format/docker-compose

git ci of your choice

[deep anvil]

subquestion: is it good to mix kotlin and java files in a project?

is it even possible ?

never tried it

[fervent nacelle]

yeah you can do it, you make a module in 1 lang, then include it in the other

I use gradle to do it personally

[wet hill]

toml

[fervent nacelle]

namespace must be unique over all your modules and projects

[deep anvil]

duh

isn't that for JS ?

[wet hill]

toml? No

Its like YAML, but linear

[fervent nacelle]

and how to start the jvm with an env file

[deep anvil]

alright

i see what u mean

hmm my purpose isn't towards ci/cd or devops

[fervent nacelle]

just dev?

[deep anvil]

yeah and i know that it's sometimes necessary

[fervent nacelle]

you kinda need to be able to use your local docker environment

many place will just have each dev have a full dev environment like a copy of prod

[deep anvil]

what about Jakarta EE

is it dead or what ?

or is it sort of framework

[wet hill]

If you want a bulletpoint list:

• YAML/TOML
• JSON
• Properties file (.properties)
• XML
• .env

JSON will mainly be used in the spring framework if you're looking into backend development, so its not a hard requirement, but good to know via Jackson Core

[scarlet geyser]

Closed the thread.

[scarlet geyser]

Activities have been reset.

[deep anvil]

what about this : Scala!

[fervent nacelle]

try clojure for fun

it break your mind

for a week or two

mind opening experience

[wet hill]

There's plenty of languages built to run on the JVM, you just have to pick your poison, because none of them will be built exactly for what you need; all of them have their ups and downs

[rugged dagger]

i will second the rec. for clojure. Scala and Kotlin are useful, but they are 80% the same as java + or - some specific features. You'll still be making classes and methods

clojure is at least a different beast

though i would expand beyond the jvm at some point

[wet hill]

Never looked at clojure code, but yeah it's definitely the last language you might want to learn...

(ns hello.main
  (:gen-class))

(defn -main [& args]
  (println "Hello World"))

According to Google, this is how Hello World is built in Clojure

[rugged dagger]

nah thats a bit off

for context, my job is in clojure

(println "Hello World")

is enough

the :gen-class stuff is fluff

https://github.com/metabase/metabase/blob/fdf169ab5d0bd6e5e815d312bb7ce8f09172caac/src/metabase/funnysql/core.clj this file is pretty representative

[deep anvil]

interesting

[wet hill]

If you're looking to learn a new language, I'd probably recommend to learn Kotlin since its a simpler language than Java, and is also interoperable with Java so you can use Java's libraries with a simplified java-like syntax

[rugged dagger]

(its 80% java though)

the other one I still want to find time to learn is https://flix.dev

thats a haskell-ey one, but with some fun wrinkles like effect types and "first class datalog"

[wet hill]

For example, Hello World in Kotlin vs Java

fun main() {
    println("Hello, World!")
}

// Java 25+ only
void main() {
  IO.println("Hello, World!");
}

// legacy way
class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    System.out.println("Hello, World!");
  }
}

[rugged dagger]

but elm is still my go-to for haskell-likes

[rugged dagger]

lol, the "legacy way" included just to dunk

fun main() {
    println("Hello, World!")
}

void main() {
  IO.println("Hello, World!");
}

[wet hill]

Mainly to even up the competition, Java has had its fair share of improvements over the year, its no longer the same language that was built in the 2000s

[rugged dagger]

but regardless - not much to learn there

neat things for projects, if you like it you like it, but it won't really broaden your horizons

definitely go off in a different direction if you've been in java land too long

[fervent nacelle]

no no, clojure is peak

it change your brain

[rugged dagger]

prolog, erlang

just do something different

[rugged dagger]

the last language you might want to learn...
This confuses me. Do you only learn things when there is a direct and obvious path to a job using that thing?

or things that you already understand and/or are comfortable with?

[wet hill]

Not really, I learn things to either understand how they work or to expand my portfolio in order to eventually get a job, I already know Java already and it has a clearer syntax then what I sent, so I just automatically assumed that java would be better to learn first then clojure

[rugged dagger]

do you mean to say kotlin? they already know java

I learn things to either understand how they work or to expand my portfolio in order to eventually get a job,
Ah yeah, so that doesn't really enter my head

the portfolio part

its a self-defeating strat

[wet hill]

How so?

[fervent nacelle]

if you never made projects in the lang and you get employed for it, good luck.

[wet hill]

Well yeah if you're trying to get a job in clojure then you should learn clojure, but if you're looking to learn a new language, clojure is probably not one you'd want to prioritize imo

[rugged dagger]

a lot of ways, but to start a list:

• By only learning popular things, you maximize the number of people you are implicitly competing against. Nothing is special about a dev that knows Java and Kotlin
• A lot of patterns in smaller languages translate to sometimes slightly awkward patterns in more popular ones. There is a lot of value in knowing things like the accumulator pattern or having the ability to write a loop using only recursion
• People come from different backgrounds. The job is 80-90% communication and having a frame of reference for "How we did it in XYZ" helps a lot with that. Especially if you can, say, explain why kotlin approaches something a different way/the tradeoffs.
• It isn't always obvious when something will become useful. It is much more effective to learn a wide variety of things than to rest on your laurels
• A lot of aesthetic preferences people pick up are harmful. Being forced to work in "ugly" things has merit

If you learn prolog, you'll have a good foundation for datalog

if you learn datalog you'll have a much deeper understanding of SQL

just knowing what is and is not possible requires broad experience.

the goal of learning is to expand your horizons

and that will loop back to being better at your job, but you can't just be a slave to bullet points on job listings.

i saw a conference talk last week about a big distributed system someone built on the jvm

the design was heavily inspired by erlang's OTP

thats the kind of hat trick that is hard to pull off if you wrote off erlang because its ugly and there aren't many jobs

[wet hill]

I'm unfamiliar with datalog or prolog, but my roadmap was essentially:

• HTML/CSS/JS
• Java
• Python
• C

And with those languages I built various apps with other languages or file formats, like:

• YAML/TOML
• JSON
• SQL

Those languages helped me learn the basics in:

• Web development
• Object-oriented programming
• Low level programming

The portfolio part was mainly because the way I learnt was essentially:

1. Find something cool and interesting (for example, Microsoft OneDrive)
2. Understand how it works under the hood
3. Reproduce my own version

Which would output a fairly ugly, yet working prototype of said thing I want to design. So instead of simply showing up said prototype, after learning and optimizing how it can work, I recreate it, from scratch, as a portfolio piece and put it on my Github in order to showcase what I built and what I learnt by building said project

[rugged dagger]

and once you are past that, now what?

[wet hill]

Move on to the next project, to learn more about something that interests me

For example, I got bored of making Java plugins over the summer, so I decided to code my own operating system to finally learn how C works, how pointers work, and essentially how low level programming works

[rugged dagger]

thats one way, im just saying at a technical level there is a lot more interesting to learn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrIjfIjssLE

[wet hill]

lot more interesting to learn?

[rugged dagger]

yeah

like after you learned Python your next priority wasn't Ruby

i mean you can learn Ruby, but its pretty similar to Python

but learning C had value because it expanded what you can do

there are more categories of things to dive into

still youd learn ruby as a means to do something else, or if it caught your eye

[wet hill]

True, but there's no point in learning a similar-ish language if your objective is just to learn (except if its for a job). Once you know the core fundementals of OOP, interpreted languages and low level programming, other languages become much more easier to learn; in this case you wouldn't want to learn Clojure if you already know Java, because they're both JVM languages, and Java is the more popular one so in terms of job openings Java is superior then Clojure

[rugged dagger]

eh so i don't think it divides that cleanly

i'm big on "never avoid learning something"

and i'll tell you, there are significant differences in program structure

and more job openings doesn't really mean what people think it means

remember its not just demand, its supply and demand

there are a lot of java jobs and a lot of java programmers

there are few clojure jobs, but also few clojure programmers

what matters isn't the absolute numbers, its the ratio

so like Metabase, where I work, hires internationally

getting good clojure programmers is hard

so they pay good money for them and are willing to offer full remote

[wet hill]

It's not about not learning something, its more about learning something that will greatly benefit your career. If you enjoy learning old or unused languages like Fortran, go for it

[rugged dagger]

Not the easiest to reach chart, but notice how scala, ruby, elixir, clojure, and erlang are basically on another tier w.r.t. pay?

(this is the 2024 stack overflow survey)

learning old / seldom used languages can greatly benefit your career

both in the ways i was describing before, and directly via a better paying job

and just being qualified for more jobs

[inner copper]

How do you think writing an operating system will greatly benefit your career?

You're also using x86 in segmentation mode instead of 64 bit long mode where everything is done via paging, wrote a pic timer instead of either apic timer or hpet driver, keyboard via serial instead of usb (i shall update as i read more). If you're career maxing why are you doing everything the legacy way?

[inner copper]

100% agreed

[wet hill]

Writing the operating system wasn't the goal, it was how to code in C that was the goal

Most of the low level stuff was actually AI assisted