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Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

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Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#41

Post by jerven »

yareally wrote: post #34
microtonal wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are languages on the JVM as well with far less boilerplate, that still give you static typing, performance that is compatible with Java, and the whole ecosystem. For instance, Scala and Kotlin.

Plus they tend to avoid all the excessive XML tooling and configuration that goes along with J2EE. Compared to nearly any other templating system, JSP is one of the most tedious I've encountered and try to avoid. I had the displeasure of using it a while ago with Struts for a project at my University and hope it will be the last time I ever have to use it. I assume it stems from Coldfusion and it being popular around…

J2EE was last released 10 years ago. Since then its been JEE and with the latest you should not have to use XML for configuration only when you want some really odd config instead of going by convention.

JSF2/Facelets replaced JSP in the most recent JEE standards and is much nicer to work with.

I mean JEE 1.6 was released 4 years ago (around the time of Rails 2.0). For a standard that is not bad.

We actually use a lot of apache wicket which is a very nice framework for website/applications.

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#42

Post by pron »

Styck wrote: post #23
petercooper wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem of many is that Java is quite verbose, and while IDEs like Eclipse help with this, there's a significant contingent of open source developers who both refuse to use typical IDEs and who also like to manually manipulate their code rather than let an IDE tweak it about. Languages like Ruby and Python make that easily manageable in a way Java doesn't.

This is one of the reasons I use Go in favour of pretty much anything running on the JVM stack. I don't have to change my workflow at all between working in Python, C, Go and JS. I can use vim for all of the above and none of them force me to have years of experience with an IDE in order to be productive.

Sure. Go is pretty much a JVM-less Java. To me, it seems the exact wrong things to take from Java. Go takes the language (Go is a simplified Java, with some modern improvements) - which is only OK, but drops the JVM, which is awesome.

It does have one advantage over the JVM, which is a much shorter startup time. But Java has better performance and far better monitoring tools (as well as dynamic linking and hot code swapping).

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#43

Post by pkolaczk »

latk wrote: post #22
sgt wrote: post #14

Java is rapidly becoming more viable as an alternative to all of these "trendy" languages these days, e.g. Ruby, Python, Go. What I mean by that is simply that a lot of developers are prejudicious against Java due to historically it being slow and having tedious development feedback cycles. We use Java extensively (and Java EE 6) in an agile IT business and it is truly an asset. I encourage others to look in the dire…

Nobody has ever used Ruby because he thought it might be faster than Java. Java primarily competes against C++, not against “scripting” languages like Ruby and Python which have significantly shorter edit-(compile)-run cycles. Each of these languages also have unique features that are difficult or cumbersome to model in Java (functional programming, metaprogramming, modern object systems). I do not doubt that there c…

Short edit-run cycles: check (Scala REPL, JRebel, Play Framework) Functional programming: check (Scala, Clojure, Java 8) Metaprogramming: check (Scala macros, Clojure) Modern object systems: don't know what you really mean by this, but Scala's object/type system is pretty cutting-edge.

Now, what about static type system and IDEs finding type-errors when I write code? This is making development fast. Having to run unit-tests or the app itself whenever I change somehing is damn slow.

Also, what you gain by short edit-run cycles in Python/Ruby, you waste when you have to do any major refactoring (again - lack of static type checking). I programmed a serious app for a bank in Python, and, long term, just because of this, development wasn't any faster than with even pure Java.

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#45

Post by pkolaczk »

brianpgordon wrote: post #20
jgalt212 wrote: post #7

All this is only worsened by the ‘black box’ nature of the optimization level switches. Doesn't the JIT do all sorts of crazy stuff that's not always reproducible and thus hard to profile? I know this is the case with V8, but probably also so with Java. I don't know much about compilers, but the author seems to know even less.

The author appears to be laboring under the assumption that enabling GCC or Clang optimizations can cause failures in programs, in contrast to Java where the guarantees are rock solid. Of course, this is not true- in both Java and C++ the compiler's optimizations are strictly standard-compliant (at reasonable O levels in GCC) and in both if you rely on undefined behavior then optimizations can break your application.…

Sure, but the number of ways to (accidentally) rely on UB in C++ is order of magnitude higher than in Java.

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#46

Post by pekk »

Why Big Band Music Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 - You Can Dance To It

There are still fans of Big Band music!

Java fans (or maybe I should say, employers) who want to keep exhuming this dead horse might be well served to emphasize "you can get a job" and "it's enterprise" and "JIT makes Java faster than Assembly" as they have been doing for decades, rather than tarting it up (a Java logo with an electric guitar, seriously Dad?) and comparing it to languages which are even more ancient. Java is closing in on 20 years old...

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#47

Post by pron »

sgt wrote: post #14

Java is rapidly becoming more viable as an alternative to all of these "trendy" languages these days, e.g. Ruby, Python, Go. What I mean by that is simply that a lot of developers are prejudicious against Java due to historically it being slow and having tedious development feedback cycles. We use Java extensively (and Java EE 6) in an agile IT business and it is truly an asset. I encourage others to look in the dire…

As a Java and Clojure developer, I wholeheartedly agree, but your premise suffers from HN/GitHub bias. The amount of software written in Java (and you can add other JVM languages too), both in terms of developers as well as total features worldwide handily dwarfs Ruby and Python combined, possibly ten times over.

Just to get a sense for this bias, consider that IBM alone employs more than the number of employees in Google, Facebook and Twitter combined, multiplied by 9. If you add banks' huge IT departments, defense companies and more, you'll find that the entire Web software ecosystem is on the order of a few percents of the entire software industry.

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#48

Post by bhauer »

JasonFruit wrote: post #13
nness wrote: post #12

Argh. You can't use Open Sans Light as a body font...

For those of us who don't know fonts, can you explain why? I'd like to avoid making a similar mistake, and I wasn't bothered when reading the article.

Light fonts are for accents or headers, not for body text. The body text should be normal weight and, in my opinion, should not be #5F5F5F either. That is unnecessarily punitive to the reader.

Here is an image comparing the original on the left and a corrected version with black text in a normal weight on the right. Note how much easier the right side is to read. http://i.imgur.com/WMJ8zcG.png

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#49

Post by ssmoot »

petercooper wrote: post #17
sgt wrote: post #14

Java is rapidly becoming more viable as an alternative to all of these "trendy" languages these days, e.g. Ruby, Python, Go. What I mean by that is simply that a lot of developers are prejudicious against Java due to historically it being slow and having tedious development feedback cycles. We use Java extensively (and Java EE 6) in an agile IT business and it is truly an asset. I encourage others to look in the dire…

One problem of many is that Java is quite verbose, and while IDEs like Eclipse help with this, there's a significant contingent of open source developers who both refuse to use typical IDEs and who also like to manually manipulate their code rather than let an IDE tweak it about. Languages like Ruby and Python make that easily manageable in a way Java doesn't.

Going by LOC: I find I write less Scala than Ruby to accomplish a thing. To be fair I don't really include import statements in that comparison since I rarely actually write an import manually (IntelliJ alt+enter completion).

Learning where things are in the stdlib for Java is different, but not harder than Ruby IMO. Where is MD5 in Ruby? Or DateTime?

I can and do code Scala in ST2 on occasion. Mostly for gists. IntelliJ just makes working on bigger codebases nicer.

Anyways, just an opportunity to say: You don't necessarily have to trade in performance and verbosity. You can get a relatively succinct language, with much better performance, and still enjoy the ecosystem.

Re: Why Java Now Rocks More Than Ever: Part 1 – The Java Compiler

#50

Post by specialist »

petercooper wrote: post #17
sgt wrote: post #14

Java is rapidly becoming more viable as an alternative to all of these "trendy" languages these days, e.g. Ruby, Python, Go. What I mean by that is simply that a lot of developers are prejudicious against Java due to historically it being slow and having tedious development feedback cycles. We use Java extensively (and Java EE 6) in an agile IT business and it is truly an asset. I encourage others to look in the dire…

One problem of many is that Java is quite verbose, and while IDEs like Eclipse help with this, there's a significant contingent of open source developers who both refuse to use typical IDEs and who also like to manually manipulate their code rather than let an IDE tweak it about. Languages like Ruby and Python make that easily manageable in a way Java doesn't.

Honest question: Are their refactoring IDEs for Ruby, Python, or other dynamically typed languages?

Agree 100% about Java's verboseness. I really want type inference, lightweight objects, properties (vs JavaBean accessor convention), switch for 'instanceof', etc.

However. Java's verbosity is nothing compared to the verbosity of the common APIs and frameworks. All that DI, IoC, configuration via markup, etc. are terrible efforts to make Java more like a dynamic programming language. Even the built in APIs have design pattern-itis, with types, hooks, hierarchies aplenty.

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