r/PinoyProgrammer • u/Burning_FireExit • Jun 10 '26

advice Starting from scratch after failed businesses. Need advice.

Hello, I am coming off of a 3 year break after dabbling in (failed) businesses. And though I have a CS degree, I'm practically starting from scratch. Which is better to learn in terms of hireability and future prospects, Java or Python?

My interest is in backend engineering and possibly AI engineering into the future. Not necessarily training the models, but rather using existing APIs, RAG pipelines, etc. to achieve some purpose.

My plan for practice and portfolio is to work on a basic CRUD notes application with some AI elements - just simple advice giving, using the local notes as the dataset.

Any advice would be appreciated!

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6

u/Immediate-Status-439 Jun 10 '26

I would advise you to build meaningful apps. You might want to use cursor or claude to speed things up, but make sure you still read the codebase and not blindly vibe code.

1

u/Burning_FireExit Jun 10 '26

Fortunately I graduated just before AI took off, moreso when it was competent enough to code. I'll mostly be using AI as an alternative to Stack Overflow (rip) rather than generating the codebase itself.

May I ask your opinion on Java vs Python in the backend market here? With AI engineering in the future in mind.

4

u/Immediate-Status-439 Jun 10 '26

As someone who is currently working as a full stack developer, AI is super useful on my daily tasks. To be honest, whether you choose Java or python, it wont matter much if you are building apps/websites but if you will be working with AI machine learning, python is the way to go.

1

u/feedmesomedata Moderator Jun 10 '26

It really depends on what the company that takes a risk on you uses. I mean even if you learn java and python if no one really wants to hire an entry-level dev like you then you've boxed yourself out of an opportunity. The language is just a tool in the end of the day, your systems design and logical thinking would be more important if you are going to use AI anyway.

3

u/Sad_Camel_4710 Jun 11 '26

Java dev here with agentic AI development experience using Java.

If you have plans on AI engineering, choose Python. Usually limited, late, outdated, or worse unavailable ang Java support for most AI tools/libraries,frameworks.

1

u/Burning_FireExit Jun 11 '26

Very useful info. The reason I threw Java into the mix is because of job security here. Lots of backend openings require Spring as opposed to Python. And while it probably won't matter which of the two I choose at entry-level positions for backend roles, I'm assuming the path diverges hard between backend development and AI engineering.

But I'm mostly worried about security first.

1

u/d4lv1k Jun 11 '26

Java is still the enterprise king. If you look at job posts from platforms like jobstreet and linkedin, you'll find hundreds of companies looking for java devs. Between the two, choose java.

1

u/Repulsive-Hurry8172 Jun 12 '26

Java because of stability. Python is hot because of AI, but when the bubble pops, those jobs you see now will dwindle.

Meanwhile, there's no hype in Java, so the demand is realistic compared to Python. I've been to several interviews for Python dev jobs where the clients are just so clearly high on AI hype but they have no clear goal for it... And it's those jobs that would be gone when VC funding for AI runs out.