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.
Then you use something like jenv or an alternative
Java Is Underhyped
521–530 of 808 posts
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#522Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Kotlin could he better, but doesn't go all the way. Without HKTs and implicit injection, Java is going to eat its lunch. Java already has records, type inference, parametric null safety with Optional, Loom provides coroutines, vavr and streaming apis have given us theabilitytodo FP... what's left as a unique feature?
Kotlin will survive because it was picked for Android to avoid copyright issues. But the difference between the two languages is vanishing small.
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#523Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think it's interesting that you're lumping Apple in there. Their iOS stuff has been fairly stable, but they've been fairly aggressive in chopping off support for legacy tech (32-bit apps was a big one, especially in the macOS world).
I have followed Apple architecture since the 128k Mac and the Lisa. They have studiously avoided breaking all apps at the same time. To wit, the 68k to Intel migration for many was recompiling with Xcode, and some code review per Apple guidelines. They actually went to great lengths to give you tools to ensure your migration went as smoothly as possible, where the OS interface was concerned. ARM: Lather, rinse, repea…
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Re: Java Is Underhyped
#524Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The amount of vitriol Java receives in the game development space is rather strong. Java is a language with mandatory GC, tiny objects scattered around the heap (poor locality), and no value types or low-level memory access. This makes it very poor for games (you know, other very basic ones). But they're rapidly addressing these concerns.
This is true for JS too, but I never hear as much hate for that language. Also there are classes of games for which the latency introduced by a GC may not be that much relevant (e.g. strategy or simulation games).
You probably don't hear as much hate for JS as a games language because it's not even on the table for a consideration when making a moderately intensive game
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#525Earlier quoted context omitted.
Guess I'm nobody. I created a simple Swing (desktop) app in Java a couple of weeks ago. The process was something like: Create new Java project in IDE Add no dependencies Use the built in IDE tooling to create a runnable JAR and tick the box to export the Ant build to a build.xml file. Why would I want to complicate things by adding Maven/Gradle to the mix?
The complexity of maven is well understood and battle tested. The complexity of a custom build is not. In my opinion it is of a far more concerning sort of complexity.
It's an Ant build file - nothing complex at all. If you no or few dependencies and are comfortable managing them manually, Ant is fine.
Non-networked applications don't tend to need to be so paranoid about keeping up to date with the latest versions of dependencies.
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#526Earlier quoted context omitted.
Progressively slower development seems like a pretty massive risk these days, where not being able to chase a competitor's big feature can be the death knell to your company. Though it seems java in general attracts a culture of slow moving bureaucrats which doesn't necessarily translate into higher quality (in fact, I'd argue it translates into worse quality).
> Progressively slower development seems like a pretty massive risk these days, where not being able to chase a competitor's big feature can be the death knell to your company. You are conflating to different layers. Not being able chase a competitor's big feature can be the death knell to your company, yes. But this does not mean that building your business software on stable and proven foundations is a high risk. O…
You're the one conflating my argument here. What I'm pointing out is this: there's somewhat of an assumption that java moves slow yet steady, therefore not generating the code mess other languages get blamed for, ending in either an undecipherable mess, or degradation of development quality and speed. The idea being that java makes one more likely to win the marathon in favor of losing the sprint. Whereas many other languages can only win the initial sprint, become messy, and then proceed to be unable to move with competitors anyway later down the line.
In practice, I've barely ever seen this assumption truly come to fruition. I see java codebases degrade, become undecipherable messes filled with reflection, inflate themselves to become incredibly hard to understand or work with, at similar rates. I still see JSPs throwing garbled stacktraces that barely help understand what's wrong. Still see business shoot itself in the foot because it said "this should never happen", so the code is made under the assumption it doesn't happen, because null is still available and no one uses optionals, and 2 months later you have clients show you another NPE after going through 15 layers of business-modifying logic and people spend a week uncovering how the situation can take place (or worse, it is retroactively sealed up and the actual bug is still there). If there's some magic spell that helps java become less messy than other static languages or even some dynamic languages, I have yet to see it.
At that point, one has to question: what are we losing the sprint for? Are we truly increasing the odds of us winning the marathon? Not even its most espoused benefits, libraries, write once work everywhere, etc., seem to be remotely unique anymore. The only two answers I see, are legacy, and the number of java devs available. Lose a java dev, no problem, just pop in another. Want to rewrite the app in a different language, or even in less verbose, modern java? Good luck convincing management firmly believing that a rewrite of one month is more costly than pushing out features at 1/10th the speed post-refactor for another 2 years.
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#527For 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…
Java is great when you need speed approaching Rust/C++ but don't actually need to be the fastest.
It's way easier than C++ and will get you 80 percent of the way there in terms of performance
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#528This 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…
> For example properties are relatively easy to implement, but instead developers decided to implement records which are very different
But why would they bake in a misfeature? Yeah it is popular, but was never a good idea to begin with. Records and new language features try to slowly shift the focus to a more immutable, FP-oriented style of OOP, which is imo a good decision. Of course it doesn’t make imperative code legacy, the two worlds can coexist perfectly.
> Modules are weird thing that nobody asked for
This is the feature that allows the JDK team to do their work. You either expose the internals and freeze it, effectively killing the platform, or encapsulate it. It is/was a great decision, and it didn’t broke too many things.
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#529This 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…
Providing records was never about providing properties, but yes I agree properties would be a great addition.
> They throw out Java EE instead of improving it
Giving EE to the Eclipse foundation and transitioning it to Jakarta EE is about improving it. It allows the Eclipse foundation to move faster without having to go through the JDK standardization process.
Re: Java Is Underhyped
#530Java is a good language for many use cases. What are the alternatives when I'm looking for a language that is at least as fast, statically-typed, garbage-collected, multi-platform, has good IDE support and similar amount of libraries? There are not many. There's Kotlin (better than Java but not by a big margin), Typescript, anything else?
Kotlin is better by a large margin.