I started with C when I had zero idea about coding — didn't even know what int or char meant. It was my intro to the coding world.

Then in my 2nd semester, I moved on to C++. All was good… until I hit pointers.

That completely broke me. 😅

I told a friend, "I'm stuck."

He said, "Switch to Java. No memory management headaches."

So I did. And honestly, within a month, I was super comfortable.

Java felt clean. No dangling pointers, no segmentation faults, no manual memory management.

The syntax was friendlier, exception handling felt structured, and the huge ecosystem (Spring Boot, JPA, etc.) made building applications smooth and fast.

The JVM handles a lot for you, and features like garbage collection, built-in multithreading support, and platform independence just made everything feel easier.

But something kept bugging me —

If Java is so developer-friendly, why do HFT firms and hedge funds still use C++?

I did some research. The answer hit me hard:

C++ = low-level control + ultra-low latency.

You can squeeze every last bit of performance out of your code. And that's exactly what real-time systems need.