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If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

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Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#171

Post by tracker1 »

logn wrote: post #96
pimento wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most standard complaints are over 10 years old, people should just get over it. The IDEs are a little fat and I/O hungry. If you don't have a beefy machine, just get a SSD, and that problem is gone. Spring is great, but JavaEE6 simplified things further standardising things like CDI, JPA, JSF, Jersey, etc... (also, JavaEE7 was just released). It's actually a pleasure to write web apps in Java nowadays. Great IDEs, de…

Jersey is a true joy. It's really a nice way to write restful apps. I never liked Spring. And large enterprise apps' source code makes my eyes hurt. However, none of this is a reflection on Java or the JVM itself. I think we'll have another 40 years of people predicting the end of Java until we realize it's interwoven into every aspect of computing and can't be tossed out any more easily than C or C++ can be. The JVM…

I think you hit the nail on the head... it's always been the "enterprise" apps that bugged me about Java. Java may be entirely capable.. but, for example getting an application setup in Eclipse + Java has always just seemed painful to me.. I mean an existing app. Ant + Tomcat + X + actually getting a working debugging session.

VS has usually been get latest from source control.. open sln and click debug... wait for ever it seems like for enterprise code.

Probably why I've been so taken/enamored with nodejs lately. For the most part it's not enterprise platforms... it's well tested, small modules put together like lego blocks stacked together. Event streams and pipes are awesome.

It is sometimes surprising how many deeply nested versions of npm modules are in other modules.. it's still better than having to dig through a dozen projects to update a common dependency they all share.

Java and C# will be around for a very long time, cobol is still pretty widely used... that doesn't mean I want to green field something in it.

Also, Gulp (or even Grunt) with npm is far less friction than anything I've seen in the Java space.. and nuget (.net) doesn't really compare well.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#172

Post by tomaszkubacki »

joshrivers wrote: post #117
camus wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MSFT could shut down Mono anytime it wants.How many business use mono (to build web apps) in production? Scala,Groovy,Xtend,etc... there is enough languages on the jvm one doesnt have to use any MS related tech.

Source citation please?

http://www.mono-project.com/MonoConcerns

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#173

Post by zmmmmm »

riffraff wrote: post #145
zmmmmm wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but you can't spruik that and then tell us in the next breath about the wonderful developer tools and Intellisense, etc., because most of that doesn't exist outside Windows. With Java it's not just the JVM that is cross platform - the whole developer ecosystem and culture is from the ground up. Every IDE, every compiler, every tool, all runs on every platform. It has it's holes, but largely Java actually achiev…

OT:, pardon this non-native, what does "spruik" mean? I can only find this[0] but it seems an intransitive verb compared to what you used [0] http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/spruik

Heh, I didn't even realise it was Australian slang. The meaning from your link is correct - to sell, extoll the virtues of or try to convince other people to buy something.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#174

Post by qwerta »

EpicEng wrote: post #90
zainny wrote: post #43

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Android yet. When you add in the Android factor, Java is probably still one of the most widely used programming languages today. It's funny the article straight away brings up the verbosity argument as well. You want to talk about verbosity - take a look at Objective-C and Cocoa (again, hugely popular today!)! Personally, I quite like Java.

Popular in terms of use, yes, but liked? I don't know, I doubt it. Android and iOS essentially force you to use Java or Objective-C respectively. I don't hate Java, but I don't like it either. It lacks quality of life features that other, similar languages have had for years. I can't stand writing code in it if I don't have to (and don't get me started on Objective-C...) From what I hear from others and read on a wee…

> Android ... essentially force you to use Java

You can use many languages which compile down to Java Byte code.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#175

Post by kamaal »

bradhe wrote: post #155
fleitz wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not talking about how many features the language has, I'm talking about the endless amount of line noise that you need to accomplish simple tasks. Most of what the code does is hidden behind ceremony. Imagine Newtown writing out instructions on how to calculate gravity instead of just writing: F = G((m1 m2)/(r^2)) I really don't understand how a language that can't succinctly express calculus from 300 years ago w…

The "ceremony" you're talking about has nothing to do with the language itself and everything to do with the community. You can write Java and not use the factory pattern, you know. Hell, Scala is one INSANELY complicated language. It's got about every feature under the sun. Java is simple and to the point...unless you really want to use spring or something of the sort. Anyway, you've got a really contorted view of J…

Community is a big part of the language. Else we would be writing in our self invented languages. You can write Java like anything you want, but that will make you an alien in a big world. Code reviewers won't accept your code for being the odd-one-out.

And its not about complexity or features in a tool, its about how those features interplay with the base design of the tool.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#176

Post by tracker1 »

cgh wrote: post #93
fleitz wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problems of pushing bits from one server to another aren't that complicated and the pomp and circumstance of java gets in the way of actually accomplishing those things. As you point out when you have a reasonably complicated problem like applying functions java fails miserably and other languages are a much better choice.

No offence, but it's clear you have no idea about the domains in which server-side Java is typically used. Very large enterprises have all kinds of weirdness and the Java ecosystem has a bunch of libraries found in no other language ecosystem that make things manageable. Java-the-language is sadly verbose and tedious but that's not why people choose it. So server-side Java lives in a niche and I would never suggest i…

I'd say that NodeJS or Ruby would be decent alternatives depending on your need. npm and gem are really nice in this space and cover just about any need you might have without weighing your system down in pomp and circumstance.

The runtimes aren't that much slower, and for I/O bound tasks, odds are Node is going to run just as fast with less application complexity.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#177

Post by xerophtye »

jimmaswell wrote: post #50
zmmmmm wrote: post #17

There's a lot wrong with Java, but even while having moved on and learned / used professionally many other languages I keep coming back to it and its ecosystem. There is still not another language / platform that provides the same level of a variety of things that are important to me: * platform independence * performance * low level features * simplicity and clarity (for reading, writing not so much) * infrastructur…

You can get all of that and clearer writing in c#, with Intellisense.

Umm... Isn't that just an IDE feature and not a language thing? IntelliJ IDEA 12 has pretty amazing IntelliSense features. 90% of the time it knows exactly what i want to type from the first few Letters (even though this Enterprise Level Software has tons of similarly named classes/objects etc) Apparently it observes patterns to know which classes are used with which classes most often.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#178

Post by bad_user »

EpicEng wrote: post #90
zainny wrote: post #43

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Android yet. When you add in the Android factor, Java is probably still one of the most widely used programming languages today. It's funny the article straight away brings up the verbosity argument as well. You want to talk about verbosity - take a look at Objective-C and Cocoa (again, hugely popular today!)! Personally, I quite like Java.

Popular in terms of use, yes, but liked? I don't know, I doubt it. Android and iOS essentially force you to use Java or Objective-C respectively. I don't hate Java, but I don't like it either. It lacks quality of life features that other, similar languages have had for years. I can't stand writing code in it if I don't have to (and don't get me started on Objective-C...) From what I hear from others and read on a wee…

I have been using Scala for both server-side and Android projects. Android doesn't have such a capable VM and Scala is a little wasteful in terms of short-term objects, but using Scala while being mindful about performance implications of the code you write is still better than Java. In fact on Android you can use pretty much any language under the sun, including languages that don't run on top of the JVM. The development experience may not be as great as when using Java, sometimes you suffer from interoperability issues and so on, but for personal projects it's OK.

iOS doesn't force you to use Objective-C either. For example many top games or apps have been built in C#, by means of Unity or MonoTouch. The problem with iOS is Apple's developer agreement, as they first didn't allow apps written in anything else than Obj-C, after which they changed that to not allowing apps doing JIT compilation, but now they only enforce this rule when banning apps that download and execute code on the fly. For this reason, when embedding a WebView inside an app, Javascript will not have the same performance as Safari's Javascript engine, which is kind of stupid. So many devs prefer native compilation to avoid any problems. There's nothing wrong with iOS as a platform, what's wrong is with Apple's restrictive policies.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#179

Post by xerophtye »

jaggederest wrote: post #159
EpicEng wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Javascript? Really? "Thought leaders" are hopefully just using the best language suited for the job. It often comes down to what kind of code you are writing and what it needs to run on.

You're doubting that Javascript is a popular language for people pushing the forefront of software development? I'd cite for you a ton of the work being done on node, ember, knockout, backbone, jquery, even some embeddable hardware thing I read about on here the other day. There's a huge amount of energy in that area, lots of extremely smart people. Or are you just being snobbish about javascript? It's a pretty solid…

My friend, JS has a virtual monopoly on what it does. If there are other client-side browser languages, i have not heard of them.

>It has built-in interpreters (read "Browsers") on every computer.

JS is pretty slow (It uses an interpreter!). The notion of using it on the backend is debatable. "A lot of people are putting a lot of effort in to it" isn't a valid argument. u said it yourself: "people are told to/forced to use it"

As for the hardware thing, didn't you read the HN discussion about that? no body thinks that's a good idea. It just a way to let web devs do something on the hardware without bothering to learn an actual low level language.

Re: If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy

#180

Post by gaius »

jasallen wrote: post #18

Java may not be dying, but it does take off early on Fridays for golf. Java is not dying the same way Cobol was not dying 10 years ago. It has a lot of legs left but nobody is 'hoping' to use it, they are told to do so. Java is and always has been almost completely a corporate tool. Again, like Cobol, so the 'cool kids' are not going to give it much love. It's too slow to execute to compete with C++, its too slow to…

Well, yes and no. I'm old enough to remember when Java was launched, and I was getting paid to write Java in '96. At the time it was going to be a whole new way to write software - modular software made of components downloaded on the fly whenever you needed them. That is why package names work like that , com.sun.java.blah meant a class called Blah that you would grab from the server java.sun.com when you first instantiated it. Of course it didn't work out like that, it was only in the late 90s that Java morphed into a corporate back-end language. You can pinpoint when this happened when they rushed out the JDBC spec.
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