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New Features in Java 14

blogs.oracle.com

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Re: New Features in Java 14

#5

Post by cryptos »

rafaelvasco wrote: post #2

"Helpful NullPointerExceptions": One of the biggest pain points of Java, probably the biggest. Good that it's being finally solved;

Java is quite far away from finally solving NullPointerException issues. Kotlin, C# or TypeScript with their compile time null checks solved it mostly. Common to these three languages is that they need null to be interoperable with older language versions (C#) or with related languages (Java, JavaScript). Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem.

Re: New Features in Java 14

#7

Post by justinhj »

cryptos wrote: post #5
rafaelvasco wrote: post #2

"Helpful NullPointerExceptions": One of the biggest pain points of Java, probably the biggest. Good that it's being finally solved;

Java is quite far away from finally solving NullPointerException issues. Kotlin, C# or TypeScript with their compile time null checks solved it mostly. Common to these three languages is that they need null to be interoperable with older language versions (C#) or with related languages (Java, JavaScript). Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem.

Scala does a pretty good job too, with the help of build plugins you can avoid null polution (which normally comes from Java libraries) pretty well.

Re: New Features in Java 14

#8

Post by yayajacky »

cryptos wrote: post #5
rafaelvasco wrote: post #2

"Helpful NullPointerExceptions": One of the biggest pain points of Java, probably the biggest. Good that it's being finally solved;

Java is quite far away from finally solving NullPointerException issues. Kotlin, C# or TypeScript with their compile time null checks solved it mostly. Common to these three languages is that they need null to be interoperable with older language versions (C#) or with related languages (Java, JavaScript). Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem.

You hit it right on the nail. I love how the null type being defined away from function signature in TS. It's not entirely bug free but it gets pretty far!

Re: New Features in Java 14

#9

Post by rakoo »

cryptos wrote: post #5
rafaelvasco wrote: post #2

"Helpful NullPointerExceptions": One of the biggest pain points of Java, probably the biggest. Good that it's being finally solved;

Java is quite far away from finally solving NullPointerException issues. Kotlin, C# or TypeScript with their compile time null checks solved it mostly. Common to these three languages is that they need null to be interoperable with older language versions (C#) or with related languages (Java, JavaScript). Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem.

> Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem.

I'm in no way a Rust expert, but I see a lot of code with Optionals, something like

    match sth {
      Some(v) => do_something
      None => nothing_to_do
    }
This looks awfully a lot like

    if (something == null) {
       nothing_to_do
    } else {
       do_something
    }
It might look more pleasant, but it doesn't "solve" anything, only shifts it in a different place.

Go is in the middle, because structs have no null value, only a zero value; the only thing that can be nil are pointers which I personally feel should used as little as possible.

Re: New Features in Java 14

#10

Post by bcrosby95 »

rakoo wrote: post #9
cryptos wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Java is quite far away from finally solving NullPointerException issues. Kotlin, C# or TypeScript with their compile time null checks solved it mostly. Common to these three languages is that they need null to be interoperable with older language versions (C#) or with related languages (Java, JavaScript). Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem.

> Languages like Rust that don't even know null (or nil as in Go), have finally solved the problem. I'm in no way a Rust expert, but I see a lot of code with Optionals, something like match sth { Some(v) => do_something None => nothing_to_do } This looks awfully a lot like if (something == null) { nothing_to_do } else { do_something } It might look more pleasant, but it doesn't "solve" anything, only shifts it in a d…

It solves it by making sure you handle it at compile time.

In Java you tend not to know where or when null checks have or will happen. So you tend to sprinkle null checks all over your code just incase someone somewhere forgot to check.

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