Live data from Hacker News

Java Is Underhyped

jackson.sh

41–50 of 808 posts

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#41
post #32
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can write verbose code in any language, but most other languages don't consider it normal to name a class LangDetectLanguageIdentifierUpdateProcessorFactory. (Random example from an open source framework.)

I just got some flashback reading that long string, and my heartbeat raised. The namespacing system is also a nightmare Com.prout.shit.lol...

Namespacing in reverse dns order is something Java got right. It naturally segments things and you can immediately see the relative provenance of classes.

It’s just impossible to use without editor support. Nobody who cares for their sanity can type out those package names manually. I think even Gosling said as much.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#42
post #22

Ah another new dev enamored with IntelliJ. You'd think one day they'd realize that it's the IDE they love, not the language. But in my observation, they never do. Reminds me of a rationalization I heard once about how people pick their brand of cigarettes. They all taste like crap until you're finally addicted, then the one you happen to smoke at the time is now your brand. Every new language / stack now gets compare…

A fair point, haha! I tried PyCharm recently (normally use VS Code) and I was really impressed. I think my emotions are misplaced: I might just like IntelliJ.

IntelliJ is nice, don't get me wrong. You can't really get a nice (for 2020) experience out of Java without it, because it's an absolute slog of a language. Just... so... much... ... ... ... everything. IntelliJ cuts through all that. You can get a nice for 2005 experience with Eclipse. Without an IDE, Java really falls down.

Java is a phenomenal piece of kit, the amount of engineering that went into the JVM is insane. But people took the lessons from Java and put them into newer languages, that don't have the problems Java does that require an IDE.

My love is in the language that IDEs don't and can't really add much to, Ruby. Emacs give me all I need.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#43
post #3

Java is under hyped in the same way Toyota Corollas are under hyped. Nothing is exciting about it since it's so common. I personally dislike Java since I just find it hard , you'll never want for work as a skilled Java developer

That's a great analogy, but I'm a bit confused about the later part, is it "you'll never be wanted for work as ..." or "you'll never want to work as ..."?

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#44
post #2

Thanks for the two upvotes so far! Please feel free to leave criticism of the article or my writing; I'm trying to strengthen my composition muscle.

Your jab at TS was lame as Java itself has complete type erasure for generics.

>by crystallizing type definitions and guaranteeing type guards by default.

Not so crystallizing if you know.. if you've ever used a Java List, Set or a Map. i.e., List. such guarantee. wow.

Honestly, I'd prefer TS with strict mode over Java any day because nullability is explicit, don't have to watch out for the dreaded NullPointerExceptions left and right.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#45

Java is not hyped because it is a tool. Like a microscope, it just does what it supposed to do. IMO, if you want to get a descent job in a large company working on backend systems, you want to learn: Java, C/C++ or recently Go. You will be able to build pretty much anything, from a micro service to self driving car. If you want to stick to startups, you can do well with anything else till it growth, experienced engin…

The "learn Go" part always puzzles me. In a city of 15 million (Buenos Aires), I can find about ~3 jobs for Go, but ~800 for Java. Clearly Go isn't going to be paying anyones bills anytime soon. At least not in this part of the world.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#46
Personally, I wonder if/when Java will become the next COBOL: nobody wants to learn it, feels extremely awkward and obtuse compared to whatever is current then, but there will be loads of old code that needs maintaining. Certainly feels like it's on that track now...

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You CAN make it verbose that’s for sure. No true scotsman? Even if you want to argue that Java CAN be made more terse, the vast majority of Java that exists today is incredibly verbose. Even running a Java program is verbose. Java is the only language I've used where it's more common to have a shell script that starts your Java program than just running ./helloworld. And yes, Go is less verbose than Java. Go might…

Verbosity is not a problem in large code bases. Speed of understanding and debugging of what somebody else wrote is. So, less magic is better. I will take Java codebase over Scala or Python every time, unless it is a toy script which is 100 lines

Every significant Java codebase I've worked in has had incredible amounts of magic. Between AOP, DI frameworks, APT, reflection, proxies, SPI, Lombok compiler hacks, dynamic classloaders, etc., there is a LOT of magic flying around and it can be quite hard to understand what will happen at runtime.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#49
post #28
post #7

There are a few reasons to avoid Java today. - The programs are very verbose for the functionality they provide. There are countless lines of getters, setters, and trivial constructors. While IDE helps to write them, it makes reading existing programs slow and frustrating. Lombok helps, but very few programs use it. - If you do want to use Java ecosystem, there is Scala. It also has strong type system, nice IDE suppo…

Is the Scala language finally stable? I looked at it and discarded it multiple times over the last decade because every significant language revision required changing source code.

It's more unstable that ever with Scala 3 around the corner (which is basically a new language) and the May 1st Bintray shutdown that'll be massively breaking for the ecosystem. SBT builds were failing the other day from the Bintray brown-out cause all SBT plugins are still in Bintray: https://www.reddit.com/r/scala/comments/mph43t/sbt_build_fai...

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#50
post #25

One word: Oracle. Given their insidious licensing and litigious nature, I wouldn’t touch Java with a ten meter pole.

Open JDK is pretty good now - Im migrating our prod env away from Oracle JDK soon. The smoke test env running Open JDK has passed all tests. No reason to stay on Oracle anymore. There are other JDK makers and they work great.
Post reply on HN