Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Choose Boring Technology (2015)

mcfunley.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 297 posts

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#261

Post by pdimitar »

randombytes6869 wrote: post #258
pdimitar wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience doesn't nullify mine, and vice versa. There's a huge pile of legacy Java applications out there still needing maintenance and occasional new features.

That doesn't make Java a bad choice for building new things

Agreed, it doesn't at all.

I am saying that when I was contracting with Java some years ago it was a complete crapshoot: you could get an almost brand new project with a lot of thought put in that made it a pleasure to work on, or you could get an ancient EJB mastodon that made you want to slit your wrists.

And that gamble still exists if you want to contract with Java. A lot of preliminary negotiations have to be done in order not to find yourself in a situation where you should have charged $30k a month due to the insane amount of digging you have to do just to make the thing accept one new feature.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#262

Post by pdimitar »

the_af wrote: post #192
pdimitar wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your experience doesn't nullify mine, and vice versa. There's a huge pile of legacy Java applications out there still needing maintenance and occasional new features.

You cannot judge a language and platform merely by legacy software. By that token, almost everything today is horribly broken, even trendier technologies like NodeJS or Go. You'd have to judge C by K&R standards, and C++ as the horrible preprocessor it initially was. It makes no sense! You must judge Java by the developments of the last decade at the very least . Otherwise you're ignoring the practitioners. Java hasn…

I am judging a technology by its amount of foot guns. That's why I am more fan of languages with only one way of doing things (and even that gets increasingly rare).

Java is a pretty solid tech and the JVM is one of the best runtimes in the world. But it does offer you infinite possibilities to write awful code and that made me less interested in it with time.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#263

Post by pdimitar »

HelloNurse wrote: post #181
pdimitar wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you are actually coding Java -- yes. But as a sibling commenter pointed out, there's a lot of "XML as code" in the Java world. That's really hard to work with.

XML as code can (and often does) work as intended. It's much less annoying than "exciting" episodes and habits: - let's see if our SSL certificate has been actually updated on all servers in the cluster - let's find out what I need to restart after deploying my web app update - who knows what the classpath loading order will be this time; if it's broken you can try a restart - finish the test quickly before the sysad…

Not sure how what you said fixes the points you enumerated? XML as code simply wraps other people's libraries in a different DSL and if they have bugs and/or operational complexity, no DSL on top of it will change that.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#264

Post by wpietri »

the_af wrote: post #248
mlthoughts2018 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in a company whose core systems are all written in Java, I deal with modern Java every day.

Well, it really, really doesn't show. I'll have to take your word for it. I suppose your company is doing badly, since Java is really not suitable for its needs? You seem likewise uninformed about functional programming and how it has been used to write extremely high-performance fintech systems.

No, mlthoughts2018 doesn't "seem" that way. You have decided they are, and are camouflaging your personal chosen interpretation with false objectivity.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#265

Post by scotty79 »

asddubs wrote: post #234
non-entity wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think the problem is that not all programmers are motivated by successfully building things. > Lots of us are motivated by learning things, and some are motivated by investigating and solving problems when things don't go the way they supposed to. I kinda realized this about myself recently, and now I'm wondering if I need to leave the field.

just switch to doing javascript

That's what I did.

But in all seriousness. Software development does not only need builders. Builders build stuff well but at some point they make mistakes or overestimate their knowledge of technology. Then obsessive learners and investigators are godsend.

Just know your limits and don't hope to do well at solo projects when you are in it for learning or bug hunting.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#266

Post by the_af »

wpietri wrote: post #264
the_af wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it really, really doesn't show. I'll have to take your word for it. I suppose your company is doing badly, since Java is really not suitable for its needs? You seem likewise uninformed about functional programming and how it has been used to write extremely high-performance fintech systems.

No, mlthoughts2018 doesn't "seem" that way. You have decided they are, and are camouflaging your personal chosen interpretation with false objectivity.

Sorry, I'm even less interested in arguing with what you think of another user who doesn't need your help defending their point.

In any case, that Java's OOP cannot be successfully deployed for business software is counterfactual. Anyone insisting on that point is unfamiliar with Java.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#267

Post by the_af »

pdimitar wrote: post #262
the_af wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cannot judge a language and platform merely by legacy software. By that token, almost everything today is horribly broken, even trendier technologies like NodeJS or Go. You'd have to judge C by K&R standards, and C++ as the horrible preprocessor it initially was. It makes no sense! You must judge Java by the developments of the last decade at the very least . Otherwise you're ignoring the practitioners. Java hasn…

I am judging a technology by its amount of foot guns. That's why I am more fan of languages with only one way of doing things (and even that gets increasingly rare). Java is a pretty solid tech and the JVM is one of the best runtimes in the world. But it does offer you infinite possibilities to write awful code and that made me less interested in it with time.

I don't disagree with you there are better languages which have learned from Java's mistakes, and I don't think I've argued it's the best one. Just that it's extremely successful, a good platform, and that programming in Java doesn't have anything to do with flinging XMLs like someone claimed.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#268

Post by the_af »

pdimitar wrote: post #261
randombytes6869 wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn't make Java a bad choice for building new things

Agreed, it doesn't at all. I am saying that when I was contracting with Java some years ago it was a complete crapshoot: you could get an almost brand new project with a lot of thought put in that made it a pleasure to work on, or you could get an ancient EJB mastodon that made you want to slit your wrists. And that gamble still exists if you want to contract with Java. A lot of preliminary negotiations have to be do…

That gamble exists in one way or the other with any tech platform. I double dare you to take on a codebase written with NodeJS, Golang or Python without checking its sanity first. This isn't exclusive to Java.

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#269

Post by dnautics »

the_af wrote: post #240
dnautics wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Which for some reason plague Java more than other languages. Is the reason a mystery? Java is the language that got a multibillion dollar marketing pitch at its inception. It was designed to be in "the enterprise" from day 1.

I'm not saying it's exactly a mystery. Java had the misfortune of being ubiquitous when XP and design patterns became all the rage. Every intern using Java had to learn "patterns", and schools where teaching them too. Heavyweight frameworks like Spring (and before that, EJBs( were all the rage too. It took a lot to extricate modern Java from that situation.

sorry i think I misinterpreted when you said "for some reason"

Re: Choose Boring Technology (2015)

#270

Post by praveen9920 »

nlitened wrote: post #235
praveen9920 wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are early stage start-up, all your employees including engineers should be onboarded with the idea rather than technology choice. If you have someone joined you for any reason other than the excitement for idea, there is higher chance that you will find them going off track too often and it will drag you back If you are mid-size company, I will assume that you can afford giving some breathing space for everyon…

There are also small software companies that are not VC-funded startups with flashy ideas — e.g. small bootstrapped consultancies and niche software shops. In these companies you still have to hire developers for reasons beyond excitement for The Idea.

Services companies are different breed altogether. I am a co-founder of such services company, struggled a lot with attrition.

I realised that having people who love your culture will always have your back irrespective of what they do.

Also, Being a niche software shop, one could potentially become contributors to that technology which is exciting in itself.

Post reply on HN