Originally Posted by
Gertrude the Wombat
Choosing to be a "JAVA-based programmer" is a mistake. What one needs to be is a "programmer who, amongst plenty of other languages, can use JAVA".
True, but Java will be around for a long time. C# pretty much killed any mass market desktop for Java, and Flash pretty much killed it in web browsers, but it's big on servers, is used a lot in custom business apps and is now the default development language for Android. We have Java server systems in the field that are expected to be running well into the 2020s.
The main point is that you shouldn't have Java enabled in your browser unless you need it, just as you shouldn't have Flash enabled unless you need it. Any plugin introduces new security holes, so you should always disable any you don't need.