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Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

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Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#31

Post by vannevar »

ryandvm wrote: post #22
nupark2 wrote: post #15

Most of these answers don't seem to be written by anyone actually involved in "enterprise" development. Here are our simple reasons: * The JVM is fast. * The JVM can take proper advantage of multiple cores directly (no GIL). * The JVM is efficient compared to other runtimes. * Java is type-safe. * There's a library for everything , and libraries are generally well-documented, unit-tested, and provide stable releases…

Nah. Those are the reasons that an organization would like to list for using Java. But "kls" nailed it above. It's mainly inertia and labor availability at this point. The reality is that most enterprise projects are generally so many layers of lasagna code that JVM performance is about 20 down on the list of things to blame for poor performance.

It's mainly inertia and labor availability at this point.

Perhaps, but you can't ignore the reasons that the inertia and labor pool came to be in the first place, many of which nupark2 lists and which are still valid.

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#32

Post by bigtig »

Because Java is strongly structured, it's easier to bulk hire and fire programmers into and out of large projects. The ramp-up time is shorter.

And that forced language structure can function as a rudimentary safety net for mediocre programmers.

From a large company's point of view, it is a cheap and homogenized programming force. You, I and Joel Spolsky might care about the "good" programmer that massively outperforms other programmers. Most businesses want cheap and reliability.

Add to that a market of off-shores and other workers that fit the "cheap" bill and you end up with dominance. When's the last time you saw a H1B that programmed in Haskell?

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#33

Post by DrinkWater »

I also do believe it is the ecosystem. You wont find the amount and variety of tools for any other programming language. Just look for Enterprise Search Solutions (semantic, linguistic, etc.): the majority is written in Java.

How did the ecosystem grew so big? Java is free and is easier to learn and faster to develop, compared to other "big players" (e.g. C++)

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#34

Post by nradov »

The code we're writing today has an expected service life of ~15 years. Java code written according to current best practices will still run well, with minor maintenance, 15 years from now. Oracle and the JCP won't allow any changes that seriously break backward compatibility.

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#35

Post by Ubersoldat »

Here we work with scrum and have a pretty agile development cycle. I really believe that if we were to develop our site ground-up, we would use JEE again for the same reasons some of you've pointed out... and actually, we're doing it!

But, for example, many of our webpages are made with PHP using some CMS (Typo3) because it's perfect for this. Our mobile site uses our Java webservices from PHP too.

I've been working with JEE (formerly J2EE) and JSE for some ten years and I know of Java's (platform and language) problems, but I think that they are surpassed by its capabilities, tools, resources availability, etc.

Do I want Java to go away? Why I ask? It works! It's not perfect, is not shiny, is not "agile", but it gives management that warm feeling of cash flowing in. Oh! And it gives me a job!

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#36

Post by Ubersoldat »

Here we work with scrum and have a pretty agile development cycle. I really believe that if we were to develop our site ground-up, we would use JEE again for the same reasons some of you've pointed out... and actually, we're doing it!

But, for example, many of our webpages are made with PHP using some CMS (Typo3) because it's perfect for this. Our mobile site uses our Java webservices from PHP too.

I've been working with JEE (formerly J2EE) and JSE for some ten years and I know of Java's (platform and language) problems, but I think that they are surpassed by its capabilities, tools, resources availability, etc.

Do I want Java to go away? Why I ask? It works! It's not perfect, is not shiny, is not "agile", but it gives management that warm feeling of cash flowing in. Oh! And it gives me a job!

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#37

Post by mgkimsal »

I'm a Grails advocate, and can be pretty productive in it. This is coming from someone with 15 years of PHP experience (sprinkled with some other tech), and I'm pretty productive in that as well. There are some aspects of projects I'm actually more productive in Grails in, which is a byproduct of the groovy/java language syntax than anything else. GORM is a dream to work with for 90% of the projects I do, as opposed to any PHP-based ORM, for example, and even Rails' ActiveRecord. Obviously just "imo"

Probably a bit off topic, but PHP/Ruby/Python/Perl scale up much easier than Java scales down. And there's fewer large scale problems/apps than there are smaller scale stuff, so we see far more usage of PHP/etc in most day to day work.

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#39

Post by mping »

Besides all the historical reasons cited, there's a simple reason: economics. The bulk of enterprise software are CRUD apps that maybe chat with an ESB or whatever; the quality is mediocre/ok, and whoever pays the bills just want to get the project done ASAP. The pool of Java devs is HUGE, it's quite easy to lose a Java dev and get him replaced the day after. The risk of using Java is very low from a management perspective; if you replace Java with Ruby/Scala/Python/etc the perceived risk would be much higher.

Besides, most big enterprises are already paying IBM/Oracle/Jboss/etc for Websphere/MQ/ or whatever App Server and support; it makes sense to use it anyway.

I would say it's mainly inertian and (perceived) risk management. BTW, I believe the Java camp got alot of things right, but that's another story.

Re: Ask HN: Why do big companies tend to only build with Java?

#40

Post by kls »

mapgrep wrote: post #20
kls wrote: post #7

There are a plethora of reasons that the enterprise uses Java and many of them are really good reasons but the main reason now is inertia, so many enterprises and vendors are invested in Java that to divest of Java just does not have a good value proposition, given the fact that their has not been a major revolution in languages or run-times, no one has had the stomach to try to move off in a serious attempt. To unde…

You make Java's decline sound almost inevitable. Perhaps it is. But Java retains significant performance advantages thanks to the (by now) well optimized JVM, and SaaS has actually helped it replace more elegant languages like Ruby in contexts where performance is critical, since the whole code base doesn't have to be thrown out, and Java can be dropped in strategically. A good talk on this is "Twitter: From Ruby on…

I apologize if my writing inferred that Java's decline was inevitable, it was not my intention, rather my intention was to point out that Java's dominance is related to some factors that are now changing and may give room to other options. It may or it may not, I generally try to stay away from predictions because there are many variables that can affect the outcome of the future. As such I was not trying to predict the rise of alternative or the fall of Java just merely stating the point that SaaS will allow vendors behind the service curtain a lot more flexibility it what they choose to provide those services.
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