Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#1

Post by throwmeaway222 » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 3:37 AM UTC

I left Java behind after using it for 20 years around 2018 or so. I've been using Python, Typescript since.

I think Python has made huge strides in recent times... but now with LLMs and Agentic programming - I feel like Java would absolutely be worth it again. Python helped us invent LLMs - it's quite possible if it didn't exist we would never had invented them. But my life has always been in systems, backends, etc..

Java was too verbose. Too many things to NAME. Now, agents can name shit for us. I feel like the verbosity would be absolutely worth it now - and put this compressed code life in Python behind me.

Anyone else feel this way, or are you Go/Rust/Python 4 life now?

I'm only hoping to discuss this with ex-Java's.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#2

Post by MBCook » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 3:46 AM UTC

I’ve never left Java, but it looks like you left before Java 17 which brought a whole lot of nice features compared to 11, and 11 would have just come out when you left.

11 itself had some nice stuff over 8, which I’m guessing may have been what you were on.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#3

Post by ycombinatrix » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 3:57 AM UTC

Java was the primary programming language of not just my career, but my entire life. It almost feels like comfort food to me.

Though I have moved on to Golang at work & Rust at home, I will always have a soft spot for Java.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#4

Post by palmfacehn » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 5:11 AM UTC

Didn't you find the verbose style readable when you opened a project after a long time?

For me the time spent coding is the last step. The more important task is always in identifying a problem worth solving and formulating what I hope to be a coherent design.

The actual typing, while tedious, is the least important part. Just the same, I am sometimes feeding a snippet to a LLM and having it fill out the tedium. Results vary, but the verbose style and longWindedDescriptiveNames seem to help. A few inline comments pick up the rest. The LLM will also expand these into Javadoc type comments.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#5

Post by jauntywundrkind » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

I've been sort of thinking the same. The Context Dependency Injection stuff was so great, allowed creating things on demand and in different scopes of demands so easily. Jax-rs annotations mostly worked fine & had sufficient hooks to make API writing pretty easy.

I never really was super concerned about verbosity. LLM's should help here yes.

Maven was an interesting blessing and a curse. Theres so many plugins that do so many various things. It took me a lot of my Java career before I stopped trying to find good docs and references & started just diving into the source to see how plugins worked: it freed me from a lot of feelings that everything was mystical & special & showed me many plugins were quite direct & simple, with a few outliers that did ludicrously many things (usually in a bad way).

the top post is pretty vague about what people think they might want or enjoy from Java today. I'd be curious to know more specifics about what folks think are highlights.

Also for the record I left around when java 8 was finalizing, IIRC? Long time.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#6

Post by moi2388 » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 5:43 AM UTC

I’m sorry, you think Python helped us invent LLMs and without it we wouldn’t have? Are you serious right now?

You do realise the Python libraries which work in this space are written in C, right?

Java wasn’t just too verbose, it had bad IDEs and build systems.

If you want to go back, might I suggest Kotlin or C#?

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#7

Post by trenchpilgrim » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 5:49 AM UTC

Java doesn't suck anymore. Java 25 will be out this month, try it with a Jetbrains IDE.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#8

Post by GianFabien » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:21 AM UTC

My main gripe with Java is not the language, but the organizations that still write their systems in it. I just don't want to go back to working for banks, insurance cos, govt departments.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#9

Post by Pet_Ant » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:22 AM UTC

moi2388 wrote: post #6

I’m sorry, you think Python helped us invent LLMs and without it we wouldn’t have? Are you serious right now? You do realise the Python libraries which work in this space are written in C, right? Java wasn’t just too verbose, it had bad IDEs and build systems. If you want to go back, might I suggest Kotlin or C#?

In my books…

I love Maven. I cannot think of another tool of that age that has afed as gracefully.

Java IDEs are really among the best but I imagine C# in Visual Studio or Smalltalk might really be better.

That these are someone’s problems with Java… is pretty wild. But we all have our own experiences.

Re: Tell HN: I kinda want to go back to Java

#10

Post by MarkMarine » Wed, Sep 03, 2025, 6:41 AM UTC

Same, but I need to circle in on a good framework that is dead simple, not Spring. AOP is not handled well by the LLMs.