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Java Is Underhyped

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Re: Java Is Underhyped

#481

Post by dkarl »

icholy wrote: post #470
dkarl wrote: post #381

This post from "an ignorant computer science undergrad" is pretty silly, so allow me to get a little silly in response. I think if Java's new features are an attempt to woo new developers, Java comes off pretty tragically, like the old guy in the club, trying stay relevant by showing off how it just got up to date with ideas that hit the mainstream ten years ago. Whoa, check out these record classes! Fresh stuff over…

How is this the top comment?

I read the linked post from beginning to end. I wouldn't normally post jokes, but for an HN audience, there isn't much to process in it except to criticize the author's inexperience, which seemed mean, and the issues it raises have been argued thoroughly many times on HN, so there didn't seem like much of a chance of a meaty technical discussion. The demographics of who the further evolution of Java will and won't appeal to seems like the most interesting question the post raises.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#482

Post by Retric »

Pet_Ant wrote: post #444
ascagnel_ wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if you start a greenfield project, it would be most prudent to chose the same platform and language which is already used in the organization. Anecdotally, I see a trend of greenfield projects moving from Java to NodeJS. I can't think of too many organizations that have zero web presence, and basically any modern web presence requires the use of JS, so there's almost always some JS expertise built into the org…

> there's almost always some JS expertise built into the organization. That is usually part of the front-end team that don't do the backend SQL work. Tho team that would get assigned the work for a backend greenfield would be versed in Java.

It’s surprisingly rare for things to split like that. At most companies people will be more skilled at front end or back end work, but it’s rarely a clean separation with front end vs back end teams.

That’s an outgrowth of most projects being quite small. Paying a team or 20+ people to work on one thing is freaking expensive to the point where it needs major benefit or huge company to be worth it. On the other hand maintaining lots of little projects that all automated something can easily pay for a single developer at even fairly small companies. Across tends of thousands of small and midsized companies you get a lot of such teams which grow and shrink, split off and merge over time.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#484

Post by blandflakes »

dunefox wrote: post #474
blandflakes wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok I'm super sympathetic to how annoying it is to manage JDKs, but holy hell it's not like Python tooling (for example) is a walk in the park. Are you using system python? Is it pip, with it's constantly breaking upgrades, or poetry, which isn't necessarily production ready? Do you have a virtualenv? Pipenv? How do you package it? Java tooling can be painful but to me it's VERY squarely middle of the road.

I agree, Python is horrible. And I don't even like the language itself much. I like Julia, for example - although packaging there isn't great either. My problem is that Java is one of the (probably) 3 biggest languages in use, both investment and dev time wise, and it's overall just not that great .

I honestly wish I knew what was better - it's not like I've ever used a build tool I didn't hate in some way. Part of the problem with Java to me is that (IMO) maven is the only build tool that doesn't make force me to spend significant time maintaining the build as well as the code, but maven is... very much a local maximum.

I generally agree with "not that great" - Java the language I actually find fine, and to me it scratches a lot of the pragmatism that Go tries to get, with different warts in each. I try to avoid the Java framework ecosystem so I don't have to deal with beans and annotations and piles of codegen, not because I don't like the language. And Android has done much damage to the community's impression of Java.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#485

Post by oftenwrong »

chriswarbo wrote: post #293
twic wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pervasive use of `null` and `Object` Who is pervasively using Object? You are talking about a language that hasn't existed for a decade.

As a simple example, `x.equals(y)` accepts an arbitrary Object y. This one example has ramifications all over the place, e.g. I had a bug recently where I was checking if an element was in a collection, using `x.contains(y)`. That .contains method seems to use .equals, since it allows y to be any Object. In my case x was a collection of MyType values whilst y was a MyWrapper which I forgot to unwrap. Rather than givi…

Those are ancient warts that can never be changed. Almost any static analysis suite will warn you about using equals and contains with incorrect types.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#486

Post by bronlund »

icholy wrote: post #470
dkarl wrote: post #381

This post from "an ignorant computer science undergrad" is pretty silly, so allow me to get a little silly in response. I think if Java's new features are an attempt to woo new developers, Java comes off pretty tragically, like the old guy in the club, trying stay relevant by showing off how it just got up to date with ideas that hit the mainstream ten years ago. Whoa, check out these record classes! Fresh stuff over…

How is this the top comment?

Why is this post on the front page. That's the real question.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#487

Post by offtop5 »

thiht wrote: post #477
offtop5 wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>When I want to try a new Java feature and think about writing the scaffolding code, my stomach actually hurts. Like, if you're out of work for a couple of months and the only way to feed your kids is to take a Java job, I don't think you'd pass it up. I wouldn't pass it up either even though I don't like Java. The whole language feels like it's designed to meet some minimum lines of code requirement. If you're worki…

> Like, if you're out of work for a couple of months and the only way to feed your kids is to take a Java job, I don't think you'd pass it up. I would honestly consider the alternatives. I'd probably take it in the end because money is good, but I'd try to flirt with manual work instead, if Java was my only option.

>I would honestly consider the alternatives. I'd probably take it in the end because money is good, but I'd try to flirt with manual work instead, if Java was my only option.

Eh. 150k working on Java enterprise systems vs working at Costco for 15$ an hour. Java isn't great, but it's still much easier than C or C++ imo.

In a perfect world we could all work in Python all day, but that's not life

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#488

Post by jcadam »

vbezhenar wrote: post #434
dkarl wrote: post #381

This post from "an ignorant computer science undergrad" is pretty silly, so allow me to get a little silly in response. I think if Java's new features are an attempt to woo new developers, Java comes off pretty tragically, like the old guy in the club, trying stay relevant by showing off how it just got up to date with ideas that hit the mainstream ten years ago. Whoa, check out these record classes! Fresh stuff over…

As a developer who used Java for 12 years, I don't really like the direction Java takes. It's not happening like you're trying to describe. Java have some weak points which could be addressed easily. For example properties are relatively easy to implement, but instead developers decided to implement records which are very different. Modules are weird thing that nobody asked for and they broke old code (what a blasphe…

I think Kotlin is pretty much what a modernized Java should be. Between it and Clojure I don't spend very much time with Java anymore.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#489

Post by wing-_-nuts »

BiteCode_dev wrote: post #126
Nursie wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python is generally less performant. Go has a smaller ecosystem. IMHO, YMMV etc.

Yes, but that's my point. If I don't need performance, Python is ok. If I do, I won't go Java, I will choose something that is built for performance. Python is good enough for 99% of my performances need. The last 1%, jumping to java is not a big difference, I'll use rust or go. I won't use go for the ecosystem, but it's unique characteristics: easy concurrency, dead simple binary production. Java can't beat that. IF…

Java and Go are roughly equal in performance (seriously, look up the benchmarks). If you're using go for it's concurrency primitives, kotlin has equivalents.

I got into Go for a while, but if I'm honest, it's a kludgey language. Half the reason it has taken off as it has is simply down to the fact that it's backed by google.

Re: Java Is Underhyped

#490

Post by oftenwrong »

dcchambers wrote: post #35

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…

This is both hilarious and a great point. Java has no "cool factor". HN headlines will add "written in Rust/Go/Julia/Elixir" for coolness points. If you put "written in Java", it would actually make it seem less cool.
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