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Java Is Underhyped

jackson.sh

111–120 of 808 posts

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#111
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 insan…

> Without an IDE, Java really falls down.

VSC has a pretty good Java experience.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#112
> Java is fun to write, productive

What the hell? I don't think we have the same definition for any of these words.

I know Java has changed quite a bit since Java 8 (Java 9 being the last version I used professionally before switching completely to Go), but I just can't write Java again, it's physical. When I want to try a new Java feature and think about writing the scaffolding code, my stomach actually hurts.

Not to mention the pain point that it still is to install and configure a JDK, and make it work properly with Intellij, why is it still so complicated?

Then there's Maven and Gradle that are just... bad, I have no other phrasing. I hear a lot of people saying Maven already solves all the problems we have with today's tools but that's just not true, even the entire Maven stupid lifecycle should be thrown away!

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#113
post #81
post #23

Having been around in the 1990s, I can assure you that "underhyped" is the very LAST thing I think of when Java is mentioned.

I agree, my first reaction on seeing the title was "Underhyped? Really? You must be joking." The reason Java can be a nice language/runtime today is the sheer amount of resources available to be poured on it due to all the hype in the 90s. It was supposed to save us from all the effort porting our software to many operating systems and processor architectures (the computing world was much less homogeneous back then).…

> It was supposed to not only run within our web browser, but also be the implementation language of our web browser, or even the whole operating system

Tbf with Android that came to pass, at least until the applet apocalypse

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#114
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am sorry, Go? That can’t be right. I even doubt it’s any more verbose than python or swift. You CAN make it verbose that’s for sure.

Nobody who has ever written error handling in Go could possibly downvote this comment. Holy moly, the error checking after EVERY interesting method call. Talk about verbose.

It's useful verbosity. Java's verbosity is misplaced, which is worse.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#115
post #73

I do think Java has a bad rep as a "dry, corporate, enterprise" language, but I think there is an ecosystem around Java that is pretty awesome and you can build incredible applications with Java if you want to. Java has a branding problem. Java (and Oracle) missed the wave of the last 15 years when tech became "cool." If you were new to tech/programming and wanted to pick up a language, which of these three would you…

I actually laughed out loud at the Java.com homepage. I was so surprised, I expected a sleek, modern homepage but instead I got a portal to 2010.

The website is a leftover from when you had to download Java to run programs. Microsoft Silverlight homepage have a similar simplistic feel[1]. I expect it to be updated at some point once there is no need for people to download a JRE.

[1] https://www.microsoft.com/silverlight/

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#116

I do think Java has a bad rep as a "dry, corporate, enterprise" language, but I think there is an ecosystem around Java that is pretty awesome and you can build incredible applications with Java if you want to. Java has a branding problem. Java (and Oracle) missed the wave of the last 15 years when tech became "cool." If you were new to tech/programming and wanted to pick up a language, which of these three would you…

When I tried android dev I jumped to Kotlin because it's well presented Lol

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#117
post #112

> Java is fun to write, productive What the hell? I don't think we have the same definition for any of these words. I know Java has changed quite a bit since Java 8 (Java 9 being the last version I used professionally before switching completely to Go), but I just can't write Java again, it's physical. When I want to try a new Java feature and think about writing the scaffolding code, my stomach actually hurts. Not t…

On my new air I installed IntelliJ and brew-installed Java. It all works.

Where’s the pain?

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#118
post #117
post #112

> Java is fun to write, productive What the hell? I don't think we have the same definition for any of these words. I know Java has changed quite a bit since Java 8 (Java 9 being the last version I used professionally before switching completely to Go), but I just can't write Java again, it's physical. When I want to try a new Java feature and think about writing the scaffolding code, my stomach actually hurts. Not t…

On my new air I installed IntelliJ and brew-installed Java. It all works. Where’s the pain?

Wait for updates or projects requiring a different JDK.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#119
For my use cases, Java has all the wrong compromises:

- not high level enough to compete with Python/Ruby/JS/PHP, etc

- not low level enough to compete with Rust/D/Nim/Zig

- not specialized enough to compete with Erlang/R/Go/Julia

- not opinionated enough to compete with Lisp/Haskell

So why use Java ? It's good, it's fast, it's productive, it's well supported, battle tested and documented for decades with a huge pool of devs. And many companies already use it and the tooling is excellent.

But those are not sufficient reasons for me.

Python is older than Java, well supported, battle tested, documented with a huge pool of devs. But it's way better for high level stuff, data mangling, scripting, gluing, and for most web dev stuff.

If I want a distributed system or something with a lot of I/O, Erlang and Go will always be better than Java. Sure, they are less widespread, with all the stuff it implies, but for such a nice need, I will pay the price hapily: my goal is optimization for the use case. Same for stuff that needs to go fast or have a small footprint, I'm not going Java if I can go Rust.

If I want to have fun, Java is out of the loop. Better sharpen my inner weirdness by fighting with some exotic lisp. Why try productive ? I wanna enjoy myself, not run a business.

So Java is not a bad choice. It's an excellent tech. I just don't have a use case for it.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#120
post #118
post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On my new air I installed IntelliJ and brew-installed Java. It all works. Where’s the pain?

Wait for updates or projects requiring a different JDK.

You just install any JDK in any directory - nothing to configure there - and then point IntelliJ to this directory... If this is hard, then... hmmm....
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