In the previous articles in this series - “The state of Java on the Raspberry Pi” and „Getting Started with Java and Pi4J (V.2) on the Raspberry Pi“ - we discovered how we can easily interact with the GPIO pins of this board to control electronic components. The ease of use of this combination makes it the ideal starting point for education to introduce students in both hard- and software and how they can interact with each other.

Java has been one of the top three programming languages worldwide for many years already (according to the Tiobe Index), but if you ask 10 developers which is the best programming language and which one you should learn today, you’ll probably get 10 different answers. And recently there were some articles and discussions about the "coolness" of Java, or actually the lack of it… There was even an article with the perfect title “Java is criminally underhyped”.

As Java is the language I used the most for the last 10 years, setting up a new project or building a proof-of-concept for a new idea, is a matter of hours or days. And there is always a solution for the problem I need to solve. Which is probably true for each developer who has enough experience in the language he has been using the most. But having used and experimented with many other languages, I still keep returning to my “one true love”, being Java, as it always delivers the result I’m aiming for, with the right amount of code to be readable, understandable and testable!

So to me, it seems obvious that Java is also a perfect language when you start learning to program. Recently I got into contact with the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW) where they use Java and Pi4J in their courses. Let’s find out why they believe Java is a good language to learn coding. And why they use it on the Raspberry Pi.

Interview with Barbara Scheuner and Dieter Holz

Dr. Barbara Scheuner is Lecturer and Head of Computer Science Program ad interim. She studied Computer Science at ETH from 2000 until 2005, after which she started to teach Computer Science at different schools. In 2014 she finished her PhD at ETH in the field of “Visual Literacy” and started Programming with Pascal and Delphi. Since she moved to FHNW in 2010, she is teaching Java in the first year of the Computer Science Bachelors Program.

Dr. Dieter Holz, Lecturer, is a software developer with more than 40 years of experience. He co-founded Canoo, a Software-Boutique based in Basel, Switzerland (now known as Karakun) where he was the colleague of several Java-Champions. Since 9 years he teaches at FHNW Java and JavaFX in the context of real world business applications, and - since last year - Kotlin and Jetpack Compose for native Android-Apps.

Thanks for sharing your story with us! Can you describe the FHNW University and the IT-related programs?

B. Scheuner: The FHNW is a school of applied science. The major group of students...