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Java 27

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Re: Java 27

#211

Post by munksbeer »

gentlewater wrote: post #64
marginalia_nu wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not at all a bad choice. It's stable to the point of boring, and there's no shortage of people who know the language and can work with it, it's got best in class tooling, decades worth of libraries almost all very mature. Most of the language's issues are from legacy code bases coded in a style that isn't really relevant to a greenfield project.

It’s still missing null safety, right? Which means it’s still a hard no for me.

We have a java monorepo of relatively large size and sophistication, driving our entire fintech, and I haven't seen a NPE for years.

Use NullAway and it basically makes the problem go away. Our application won't build if it detects a potential NPE.

Re: Java 27

#212

Post by pjmlp »

moomin wrote: post #5

C# dev here: it’s amazing how different this is from a Microsoft release. First off, Oracle are doing versions at approximately twice the cadence. But also, and I’m guessing this is a function of the much larger Java audience: things rarely get two preview versions in a proper release. Updates in beta versions, yes, all the time. It also feels like Microsoft are bundling a lot more into the platform and leaving less…

Polyglot dev here, that uses both ecosystems, Java since 1996, .NET before it was announced to the public in 2001, only available to selected Microsoft partners.

A big difference between both ecosystems is that the Java world is like C and C++, even though Java isn't defined by ISO or ECMA, since Sun days the main implementation is only a reference, there are official documents for everything, and there is a plethora of implementations, with various kinds of JIT, GC and AOT approaches.

You can pick the real time versions for embedded from PTC and Aicas, the cloud first from IBM and Azul with finance markets in mind, the Android cousin, the various implementations for M2M gateways, copiers and phone dashboards (Ricoh, Xerox, Cisco), IoT with microEJ, and many more.

Whereas Microsoft hardly cares about ECMA nowadays, most of Mono/Xamarin is gone replaced by Core CLR and modern .NET, .NET Compact is gone, community maintained and so on.

That alone, regardless of the languages on top of JVM, or CLR, makes a big difference on the audiences when one silos themselves to a single ecosystem.

Re: Java 27

#213

Post by varikin »

madduci wrote: post #31
theandrewbailey wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never thought of Java being the 'move fast ~and break things~' alternative over .NET, but Java has a faster release schedule to get features out sooner.

Seriously, how many are using always the latest releases of Java instead the LTS ones? With LTS ones you have ~2/3 years between the versions.

At my last job, we only used LTS in production. Upgrading Java was always a long process, but that's more due a legacy monolithic app across thousands of servers.

You can almost think of the LTS releases as a major release and the non-LTS as a minor release, so really this could be 25.2. The current Java release schedule is to maintain a consistent and predictable release cadence instead of pushing big new features every 6 months.

Re: Java 27

#214

Post by PaulHoule »

za3faran wrote: post #208
PaulHoule wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One difference I think about is generics. Java and .NET bolted generics on to an existing system. Java used type erasure in such a way that a List is really just a List. Type erasure has a lot of limitations. If I am coding in Java for days I never get into trouble with it because I know how to color in the lines. But do some balls-to-the-walls metaprogramming and then it is annoying that you can't write Expression a…

This should address your example https://openjdk.org/jeps/218

I am looking forward to it, and many other things planned for Java!

Re: Java 27

#215

Post by esafak »

akkad33 wrote: post #160
doublepg23 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they? It felt like every dev that worked on our Java behemoth at a previous job was elated to switch to Go.

I don't think they do. I work in a maven shop and half of the people don't even know what to do when maven fails inexplicably

Haven't they heard of Gradle or Bazel?

Re: Java 27

#216

Post by mands »

Horffupolde wrote: post #15

Serious question: when should one use Java for greenfield projects in 2026?

Good question - am using for a greenfield AI startup in SF. Been a great decision so far: great ecosystem, bulletproof runtime, fantastic performance and new quality features arriving on a steady schedule. "Boring technology" at its finest.

At the risk of a shameless plug - blogged about it recently at https://mandeepgill.net/2026/08/31/java-for-an-ai-startup/

Re: Java 27

#217

Post by dimaaan »

skeletal88 wrote: post #48
Horffupolde wrote: post #15

Serious question: when should one use Java for greenfield projects in 2026?

Same question for .net or C# Why should anyone use it over Java? Ms is hostile towards its developers, it creates new versions of things, deprecates previous versions, uses confusing naming for newer versions.. etc.

Null pointer dereference problem. Solved for greenfield C# projects and Kotlin

Re: Java 27

#218

Post by dmux »

mrkeen wrote: post #146
dmux wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>in places where it's pointless to check, like IOException Can you explain why this is pointless? In my mind, this being a checked exception would hopefully be a hint that I should think about this failure-case and make an explicit decision whether to handle it or not. Network connection failed? Maybe I retry. Maybe I store that data somewhere else as a fall back. Isn't this similar to Go programmers needing to check…

I don't think I can recall a time where I routed-around-the-damage on the basis of a particular typed exception. As soon as you consider retrying a network failure, you immediately need to start thinking about distributed systems failures, idempotency, and all that good stuff. As soon as you start thinking about the above, it becomes immediately obvious that low-level calls should not be able to decide to re-run them…

>I don't think I can recall a time...

I appreciate that there is a _ton_ of different experiences out there when it comes to solving problems, but I _have_ encountered exactly the case I was describing, which is what led me to my original question. Isn't the fact that it was a checked exception that led you to "consider retrying a network failure, you immediately need to start thinking about distributed systems failures, idempotency, and all that good stuff" worth it as opposed to an unchecked exception you may not realize is being thrown?

Re: Java 27

#219

Post by dimaaan »

astrodust wrote: post #99
pron wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days, Java is mostly used in greenfield software that has to be very reliable, very performant, and last for many years. So it's often the first choice for banking, telecom, finance, government, defence, manufacturing control, logistics and shipping, media streaming, retail, hospitality, healthcare etc.. It's usually not a first pick for more exciting software, such as Python type checkers, JS bundlers, or TUI…

Why not Go, Rust, or C#?

Go has null pointer dereference problem.

Rust is too low-level for typical enterprise app where requirements changes twice a day. You end up spending time and tokens fighting with borrow checker.

C# is MS product, which is no-go for some folks.

Kotlin probably would be the answer.

Re: Java 27

#220

Post by doublepg23 »

chasd00 wrote: post #189
rohan_ wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is quite the take - i doubt most startups building in these spaces are using Java.

i can't speak to the others but banking and healthcare is virtually all java top to bottom. The big healthcare EMR/EHR systems are Java and every bank i've ever worked with (i use to do a lot of integrations with the big banks) was all Java. I have friends in those areas and whenever they start up a new project it's still always Java since that's where their skills are and what's on the "approved tech." list.

in my healthcare experience (claims processing, medtech) Java existed for sure but it was always as a "legacy" system they were moving away from.
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