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NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

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Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#151

Post by mynameishere »

svendisnigh wrote: post #29
winter_blue wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's outdated about Java/Swing? Java 8 is a fairly decent language, and Swing isn't bad. In fact the entire suite of JetBrains IDEs (WebStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ, Android Studio, ReSharper, etc) have their UI implemented in Swing. I suppose they could have used Kotlin, Scala, Haskell, or some other more language with a more advanced type system. But it would have been truly horrible had they written their back-end i…

The issue with Java/Swing is that it limits development velocity and makes job less appealing for current employees. While HTML5/JS is not without its own problem. Yet using it over a native framework like Swing, enables the development process to leverage external knowledge (Open Source libraries, etc.). This problem is further worsened when your competitors in enterprise Business Intelligence space can leverage tho…

I could pound out a UI in no time flat using Swing compared to anything related to JS. Desktop applications are not fashionable, but they are effectively still something that webapps and mobile merely strive towards.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#152

Post by criddell »

egwor wrote: post #124
tp3z4u wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have friends that work there and say the same thing. I turned down a job there a long time ago, I did ontologies academically so I already knew they didn't work for what they were trying to do.

What's 'ontologies academically'?

No the OP, but it probably means he did a lot of work in semantic web stuff.

https://www.w3.org/OWL/

https://www.w3.org/RDF/

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#153

Post by Zigurd »

pjmlp wrote: post #145
Zigurd wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a lot of sympathy for this view. But the results are that a good-looking Web UI is better accepted than a consistent and full-featured Swing-based UI, in no small part because it's more difficult for Web designers to make Swing apps look good.

> it's more difficult for Web designers to make Swing apps look good. Maybe they should bother to learn how to do it in first place?

People should do a lot of things. What they actually do is what matters. Despite all the web-inspired frameworks trying pave over real UI stacks in mobile devices, they have not succeeded in web-izing mobile UI. So, thankfully, we can turn our attention to the civil war of pubsub vs observer.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#154

Post by Joeri »

svendisnigh wrote: post #29
winter_blue wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's outdated about Java/Swing? Java 8 is a fairly decent language, and Swing isn't bad. In fact the entire suite of JetBrains IDEs (WebStorm, PyCharm, IntelliJ, Android Studio, ReSharper, etc) have their UI implemented in Swing. I suppose they could have used Kotlin, Scala, Haskell, or some other more language with a more advanced type system. But it would have been truly horrible had they written their back-end i…

The issue with Java/Swing is that it limits development velocity and makes job less appealing for current employees. While HTML5/JS is not without its own problem. Yet using it over a native framework like Swing, enables the development process to leverage external knowledge (Open Source libraries, etc.). This problem is further worsened when your competitors in enterprise Business Intelligence space can leverage tho…

Meh, I've done typescript node.js and java play framework projects interchangeably for the past two years and honestly there isn't much of a difference when it comes to velocity or code verbosity.

I think many people have a misconception of what modern java is. They still think java code is all this verbose monstrosity where every single thing requires massive amounts of boilerplate code. And yes, at one time it was that thing. But modern java isn't like that at all, with streams, collections, optionals and closures getting rid of much of the boilerplate.

For example, this is the entire body of the REST endpoint that fetches a drawing for a particular location in my current codebase. It wouldn't be any simpler had it been written in typescript.

  return Drawing.getForLocation(id)
      .map(d -> ok(Json.toJson(d)))
      .orElse(notFound());

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#155

Post by munin »

kpil wrote: post #133
halflings wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not Java/Spring? Google at least is known to use C/C++ for its backend. Python is (or was?) used in YouTube.

I think java comes out as one of the most efficient and battle tested backend languages. For data crunching, especially statistical jobs, Python is probably also a good fit although it's not as efficient but have a number of good statistical, mathematical and ai toolkits that seems to be more active. For running more specialized jobs, R have even more tools, but is a bit more shaky as a general language although it i…

Just curious, do you have direct experience with big companies using R, python, etc in production? My sense from working with people from those companies (and a few internships at those companies) is that you could use something like R, matlab, or scikit-learn on your own workstation with a tiny data sample to explore the data, but then do crunching by translating that program into some Java or C++ code (sometimes using specialist libraries) and running that in parallel, for production.

Do people actually just skip that step and just directly deploy their R? That seems really scary.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#156

Post by SeeDave »

fergie wrote: post #131
throwaway055 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard Palantir is maybe the most credentials-/prestige-focused tech company in Silicon Valley. I remember thinking that sounds like a good way to build a below-average team that seems very impressive from the outside. When you look at what they're doing, this strategy actually starts to make a lot of sense. They're selling a product that's somewhat incomprehensible. The value of that product is very difficult to…

Yup- when you start thinking of Palantir as an IBM, a Cap Gemini or an Accenture, it starts making a lot more sense.

There's a lot of truth to this and they use rather unique (bordering on gimmicky) job titles such as 'Forward Deployed Engineer' as opposed to 'Solutions Engineer' or 'Technical Consultant' to add an aura of spooky government mystery and mask exactly what they do.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#157

Post by TeMPOraL »

mrlyc wrote: post #88
cylinder wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how many mediocre people are being propped up by investors all over the place.

I've worked for a number of startups and observed that some people are great at collecting money but don't know how to spend it wisely after getting it, just as some politicians are great at getting elected but don't know how to govern.

Convincing investors is an orthogonal skill to running a tech company or building a useful product - much like winning an election is a completely separate skill from actually being competent at managing a country.

This unfortunate reality is why I try to avoid dealing with systems that developed professionals who are solely specialized at gaming those systems - like MBAs or career politicians.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#158

Post by TeMPOraL »

Joeri wrote: post #154
svendisnigh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with Java/Swing is that it limits development velocity and makes job less appealing for current employees. While HTML5/JS is not without its own problem. Yet using it over a native framework like Swing, enables the development process to leverage external knowledge (Open Source libraries, etc.). This problem is further worsened when your competitors in enterprise Business Intelligence space can leverage tho…

Meh, I've done typescript node.js and java play framework projects interchangeably for the past two years and honestly there isn't much of a difference when it comes to velocity or code verbosity. I think many people have a misconception of what modern java is. They still think java code is all this verbose monstrosity where every single thing requires massive amounts of boilerplate code. And yes, at one time it was…

I agree. I work with Java at my $dayjob, and I must say that the introduction of Java 8, as well as JavaFX becoming a de-facto standard Java UI toolkit, made this language much saner to work with for building anything GUI-based. It's no Common Lisp, but coupled with a decent IDE Java today isn't significantly less productive compared to other mainstream languages.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#159

Post by hueving »

criddell wrote: post #150
hueving wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is one of the most widely used languages in the world. I get the impression that people who think using Java is an issue are usually just hiding their own inadequacies by repeating hype they read on the Internet.

Would you still use it on the client side today?

It depends on what you mean by a client. If your world view doesn't extend beyond a browser, then no. However, I would still use it in client applications on servers, desktops, and Android phones.

Re: NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract

#160

Post by TeMPOraL »

bootloop wrote: post #109
rdtsc wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true universally. While there is a hot market for startups based on Angular ( or is React these days?) and microservices or other such things the market for enterprise desktop software is still there. Try writing a serious CAD application in HTML5/JS for example.

https://www.onshape.com Build by some Solidworks people offering basically the same experience but in the browser with server side computation. Very promising as it tries to solve problems which the older CAD players can't tackle with there current desktop tech.

God, I have such mixed feelings after viewing the product overview video on their site.

On the one hand, you can't deny the wins that comes from bullshit-free operations - no installing, no permissions, no need to deal with sysadmins to approve a new program[0], and updates do themselves. Files are backed up and trivially shared across devices.

On the other hand, you're now locked in to a vendor system, with vendor software doing file management, version control and sharing. You need constant access to Internet to do anything at all.

Then there's also issue of performance. I actually registered for a free personal account and started playing with this software. I saw more-less what I expected: it kinda works, like most such web tools kinda work - good enough to do something, but laggy and slow enough to piss me off if I were to spend more than 10 minutes designing anything in it.

--

I can understand all the cloud nonsense (though I prefer regular files, thank you very much). But from the quick experience, the application would feel much better if it was a desktop/mobile native program, not a webapp. It's like with Google Office suite - looks cool to have it in a browser and it sorta can help with the basic things, but try to build a reasonably-sized document, spreadsheet or slideshow, and the performance drop will make you tear your hair out.

--

[0] - How security is done on work machines is ridiculous, though it's a separate topic. I'll just leave this: https://xkcd.com/1200/.

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