Stanford just abandoned Java in favor of JavaScript for its intro CS course.

A parody of Java's logo

The Stanford professor who wrote a popular book on Java — and has taught Java for 15 years — is now abandoning Java in favor of JavaScript for his introductory computer science courses.

Stanford's website explains that their new CS 106J course "covers the same material as [older course] CS 106A but does so using JavaScript, the most common language for implementing interactive web pages, instead of Java."

This isn't the end of Java, which has decades worth of tools and codebases built up, and is still used by many large corporations. Rather, this is just a sign of the times.

JavaScript is truly open source and owned by no one, whereas Java is essentially owned by Oracle through its 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems. And Oracle has a less-than-stellar track record of honoring open source licenses.

If you're curious, you can read more about this (3 minute read)

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