Lombok makes Java cool again • Hacker News Board

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#61

Post by bobthepanda » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:15 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #17

platelminto wrote: post #6

I'm interested in the downsides of using Lombok, since the article seems to only focus on its positives and makes it seem like I should download it and start using it right now. Is there anyone here with Lombok experience that wants to share any issues they've run into while using it? All I can think of right now is the fact that the source code isn't compatible with Java.

The @Builder annotation has some odd behavior if you want to add default values (it just hardcodes them and you cannot override them!) or extra builder methods. Actually, anything involving default values seems to be very brittle and difficult to work with -- especially when deserializing objects from JSON. The @Wither annotation results in methods that do not always make a copy, and sometimes use == instead of .equa…

IIRC @Builder.Default only makes them immutable if you also specify that the variable is final.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#62

Post by rubyfan » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:16 PM UTC

Annotations have always come across as a crutch. It’s noisy at best and unsightly in large concentrations.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#63

Post by mattnewport » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

codesushi42 wrote: post #53

mattnewport wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java made some fundamental design decisions at its inception which look like fairly bad ones from today's perspective. It also introduced flawed versions of features like generics later. It also has some pretty poorly designed core libraries. What about it do you consider cool? I find it hard to think of anything I'd want to take from Java if designing a new language today. Even its bad design decisions have mostly b…

Genuinely curious, which language do you find is better designed?

Most of them to be honest :)

Some languages do at least one thing particularly well, setting the standard in that regard. Some introduce or popularize new concepts that slowly see adoption elsewhere. Several make you think about programming in a different way. Some just have an overall elegance, unity, consistency or simplicity of design that make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.

Languages that check at least one of those boxes for me include C, C++, Lisp, F#, Haskell, Lua, Python, Elm, APL, SQL, ISPC and Rust (I don't claim to be an expert in all or even most of those languages). Other languages that seem interesting / different but I know almost nothing about include Erlang, Clojure, Smalltalk, Prolog, Forth, Coq, Idris and Kotlin. By contrast I've not really seen anything in Java that checks any of those boxes and isn't done better elsewhere (admittedly sometimes by languages that came later like C#).

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#64

Post by malcolmgreaves » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:20 PM UTC

IMO just move to Scala: the change in thinking from mutable, stateful OO to immutable, pure FP (w/ some side effects mindfully mixed-in) is indeed steep. However, accepting this paradigm shift yields unbelievable dividends in terms of quickly writing correct programs that solve complex problems.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#65

Post by grahamm » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:22 PM UTC

I use Lombok all the time. Yes it has some awful bits but generally it's positives outweigh it's negatives.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#66

Post by calvinmorrison » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:23 PM UTC

malcolmgreaves wrote: post #64

IMO just move to Scala: the change in thinking from mutable, stateful OO to immutable, pure FP (w/ some side effects mindfully mixed-in) is indeed steep. However, accepting this paradigm shift yields unbelievable dividends in terms of quickly writing correct programs that solve complex problems.

Maybe you just nailed it on the head for me what I've been trying to state for a while in regards to FP. Expressing complex things like algorithms in functional programming can be beautiful and also incredible in how it adjusts your thinking. Fact of the matter is, I don't solve many complex problems like this. It makes doing tutorials and books fun but when i need to get work i stick to my usual guns

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#67

Post by jbattle » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:37 PM UTC

mattnewport wrote: post #38

chooseaname wrote: post #14

Java the language is cool. What the enterprise has done with it is not cool. Writing apps with layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of abstraction is ... self defeating. Then they'll holler, we need to rewrite it! All in the name of finding that one true architecture that can handle any business CR. Blech.

Java made some fundamental design decisions at its inception which look like fairly bad ones from today's perspective. It also introduced flawed versions of features like generics later. It also has some pretty poorly designed core libraries. What about it do you consider cool? I find it hard to think of anything I'd want to take from Java if designing a new language today. Even its bad design decisions have mostly b…

how common was it for languages to ship with robust IO, collections, and threading libraries? It might be that a lot of the good ideas in Java have become so commonplace you don't recognize them as "from Java".

(Of course, there is very little new under the sun so I'm not claiming Java was the first to do anything in particular)

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#68

Post by delusional » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:38 PM UTC

batter wrote: post #23

platelminto wrote: post #6

I'm interested in the downsides of using Lombok, since the article seems to only focus on its positives and makes it seem like I should download it and start using it right now. Is there anyone here with Lombok experience that wants to share any issues they've run into while using it? All I can think of right now is the fact that the source code isn't compatible with Java.

Just recently removed Lombok from one of our projects. 1. To use it you have to use plugin for each IDE. If project not frequently used, spending time for each developer here doesn't make any sense. 2. Another reason was, person who used Lombok abused all OOP principles. Project became a book of anti-patterns.

What were some of the OOP principles that were misused?

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#69

Post by notamy » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:43 PM UTC

koolba wrote: post #44

What's the point of this part of the generated Java code? (I split it out onto multiple lines for legibility) favoriteFoods = new java.util.LinkedHashSet ( this.favoriteFoods.size() Why not just? this.favoriteFoods = new java.util.LinkedHashSet (this.favoriteFoods);

1073741824 is maximum (signed) integer size divided by 2. This is trying to optimize for the initial size of the set so that it doesn't have to allocate too many elements, since iirc Java's hashsets are backed by a hashmap implementation which has to be sized appropriately.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#70

Post by mattnewport » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:48 PM UTC

jbattle wrote: post #67

mattnewport wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java made some fundamental design decisions at its inception which look like fairly bad ones from today's perspective. It also introduced flawed versions of features like generics later. It also has some pretty poorly designed core libraries. What about it do you consider cool? I find it hard to think of anything I'd want to take from Java if designing a new language today. Even its bad design decisions have mostly b…

how common was it for languages to ship with robust IO, collections, and threading libraries? It might be that a lot of the good ideas in Java have become so commonplace you don't recognize them as "from Java". (Of course, there is very little new under the sun so I'm not claiming Java was the first to do anything in particular)

Java not only adopted a bad model of concurrency / parallelism, it enshrined it in the language in the form of language level synchronization / locking. True, it wasn't as widely appreciated at the time that it was a bad model but there were better alternatives out there even back then. The focus on a well defined memory model in the presence of parallelism is one thing Java can take some credit for but it is to some degree a consequence of the sub-optimal threading/locking model they adopted at the language level.

The original collections library in Java was poor due to lack of generics. Again, there were better models out there and some of them were even in fairly wide use at the time (C++). Java is only recently catching up to better models for collections with streams that many other languages have been doing in some form for a long time.

I don't have much of an opinion on Java IO or how it compared to contemporary alternatives but most languages have pretty robust support for basic IO in their standard libraries. What about Java do you think was particularly good for the time?

One thing that I think Java deserves some credit for popularizing is reflection, although the Java model of dynamic reflection isn't what I'd pick if designing a language from scratch today.