Not by choice. The JVM is an engineering marvel, but the developer experience for most use cases doesn’t justify its use, e.g. dependency management, JVM tuning, boilerplate (if javas bugs you), etc.
I’ve found other cross-compilable languages, like Go and Rust, fit my need when I need to distribute the app and various interpreted or compiled languages work when we operate the software during its maintenance and feature development phases.
Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
11–19 of 19 posts
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#12No. I would use golang. Mic drop? Not sure what else to say. Try a big go project and you’ll forget all about kotlin or java classic.
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#13If you're talking web services and you're a java expert / proficient then sure why not. I used Java Spring a while back and it was fine. You probably want to use what you know. I'm using .net core web api currently. If you don't know anything it's a fair option, but so is node, Go, python with flask/django and a load of other stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#14Personally no because it's not really in my toolset. Did some Java in college and some light Minecraft modding years ago but nothing recently.
However, Java runs on more devices than anything else right? It's still a major player and I can't imagine it going away anytime soon.
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#15Yes. Scala and Clojure are my preferred JVM languages, but there are certain frameworks that are highly useful but problematic when used with Scala and/or Clojure.
* Spring Boot for web services and application. Absolutely amazing and easy to use, my favorite feature is easy integration with external authentication services. Yet there is no longer much Scala support around for Scala and the Spring framework. Clojure may be a bit better in this case as Clojure collections implement the Java collections interfaces unlike Scala. Another issue is heavy use of reflection by frameworks like Spring which tends to work poorly with Scala.
* Android applications. Dalvik is a register based and not a stack based VM; scalac produces code optimized for OpenJDK which may run inefficiently on Dalvik.
That said in these cases you have the option of using Kotlin. While it does not differ terribly from Java, it supports pattern matching (which I don’t believe is supported by Java, but I may wrong as I haven’t used versions higher than 8 extensively.)
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#16Nope. Kotlin does everything I'd want from Java, but better.
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#17It depends on what you're trying to do. Front-end Java (applets/webstart) is dead. But on the server, or even some embedded devices, Java is working fine. I'd like to ask 'why not' - Java is supported, fast enough for lots of applications and a great ecosystem of third party libraries.
JSF is a front end framework for Java and is in good health AFAIK
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#18Its an optimal choice for business. Banks, financial institutes, pharm companies and other boring places already has a plethora of experienced and moderately motivated java developers.
It's hard to sell them new features/projects when their devs cannot decypher the language you used. (Eg. scala) You can't really put a finger on what you gain from using a new language apart from it's harder to find someone to work with it an he will ask for more money.
Yeah there is the programmer centric "progressive tech stuff are FUN" view but business usually don't care...
Re: Ask HN: Would you start new project in Java?
#19It depends on what you're trying to do. Front-end Java (applets/webstart) is dead. But on the server, or even some embedded devices, Java is working fine. I'd like to ask 'why not' - Java is supported, fast enough for lots of applications and a great ecosystem of third party libraries.
JSF is a front end framework for Java and is in good health AFAIK
IMO any stateful server-side framework is in trouble nowadays since scaling them involves passing this state around which is a headache compared to current REST/GraphQL backend + Javascript framework stacks.
Oracle seems to keep peddling JSF for stuff like internal business apps, but I've not seen any development around the framework itself in recent years. It's been a while since I've seen a public site built with JSF too.