What pushes Java and keeps it thriving today are big data and Android. It also has an enormous library and framework ecosystem.<p>As for language progress, think JVM, not Java. I program exclusively in Groovy. You also have Scala, JRuby, Clojure, and others that run great on the JVM and are more feature-rich than JS (even ES6).<p>Job market is entirely dependent on your locality. I&#x27;m an expert on California&#x27;s tech job market, and even LA and Orange counties have very different job markets, different still from SV.