If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy • Hacker News Board

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

#271

Post by snarfy » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 1:54 PM UTC

goldeneye wrote: post #252

LukeShu wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Mono exists, and contains a free implementation of C#.

Infrastructure of Mono is not in any way comparable to proper c#. Also how come MonoDevelop's latest version doesn't work on Linux? On Windows it became Xamarian and it is ok ish, but I would not use it for a major project, refactoring tools are more or less non existant. On Linux they are stuck with the old version of MonoDevelop

What do you mean it doesn't work on linux? It works fine. It helps to use the distro (opensuse) the mono developers use.

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

#272

Post by CmonDev » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 1:58 PM UTC

Tloewald wrote: post #197

wsc981 wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This (admittedly fake) interview with Bjarne always makes me smile: http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/Invention%5Fof%5FCplusplus.sh...

It's a shame it focuses on OO as the main problem with C++.

I think it's targeted at non-GUI developers. I'd like to see a purely functional GUI framework.

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

#273

Post by CmonDev » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 1:59 PM UTC

stormbrew wrote: post #94

KevinEldon wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have done less than 10 hours of .NET programming in my life so I have no idea here... but my impression is that MONO substantially less accepted than a standard Java port... not trying to bash, just explaining my view. I'm moving a significant production Java app from a Linux box to Windows in the next 3 months. My expected work is about 2-days, and frankly my management wouldn't expect more, and I'd have a hard ti…

Unity is probably the biggest commercial use of Mono: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)

Xamarin is more likely.

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

#274

Post by LukeShu » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 1:59 PM UTC

cmircea wrote: post #219

pjmlp wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of the language, not the libraries or tooling. A language is much more than just syntax. With mono, one ends up writing C# code similar to C and C++, with #ifdefs, or having to search for .NET libraries that are cross platform.

Those cases are inherently platform specific and are impossible to abstract completely. UI for example. Pure Java UIs plain suck; you can use Gtk# in C# for the same thing, but none will be up to the platform's UI standards. Besides, the JVM isn't available on iOS and Android, so it isn't universally available either.

Java is actually used heavily on Android.

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

#275

Post by chatman » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 2:02 PM UTC

alpatters wrote: post #256

sfjailbird wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not true at all, Lucene is a Java project from the beginning, and has since been copied to virtually every other environment because it is such a kick-ass indexing engine.

So in no way did they copy Google's which is implemented in C++ ? Though I agree with OP - these projects and Java are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

No, they didn't copy any of Google's implementation. They simply implemented efficiently the TF-IDF based document retrieval model.

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

#276

Post by pjmlp » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 2:02 PM UTC

Zigurd wrote: post #262

pjmlp wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Except that Oracle was right into suing Google, after all. Google hasn't improved the language level beyond Java 6 grammar. So nowadays one is forced to write in Java 6 when targeting Android, which is really a pain, specially when writing libraries. Thi…

You have cause and effect backward. Oracle created a hostile environment for developing Java as an Android language. Secondly, Android's base classes and AIDL are a significant advance in Java.

What?!?

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

#277

Post by eranation » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

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.

I actually wrote an essay about this few months ago, Android was indeed one of my major points: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/da3b2c180e9c (Why Java Is Still Relevant)

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

#278

Post by RivieraKid » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 2:18 PM UTC

gaius wrote: post #247

RivieraKid wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Comparing Java to Cobol is ridiculous. I'm in the cool kids category and I like Java. If you don't want to / can't use C#, there's simply no alternative for bigger projects. Groovy - slower, much worse toolability Scala - less readable, slower, slow compilation, worse toolability, too complex.

Java is the common, business oriented language of today. How do you you think it's not like the original COmmon Business Oriented Language? It's being used by the same sorts of guys to write the same sorts of apps, no?

Java has some similarities to every programming language including COBOL but it's also totally different.

Java is used by a lot of extremely productive programmers and some brilliant apps are written in it.

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

#279

Post by wes-exp » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 2:20 PM UTC

RivieraKid wrote: post #241

gizzlon wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now you're just adding more axioms :)

You mean that "static typing allow better tools"? That's a fact ;) It allows IDEs to do smarter autocomplete, better refactorings, more static error checks, etc.

"You need static typing to have Java-like tools"

This is a widely repeated myth. Static typing does enable a few additional autocomplete capabilities, but most of the other things you probably think of as fancy IDE features are completely possible for dynamic languages.

For example, using Common Lisp with emacs and SLIME, I have:

Function/method name completion, Variable name completion, Jump to definition, Show callers, Rename (heuristic, but usually better than static analysis), Extract method, All sorts of interactive debugging capabilities, Documentation lookup, and Numerous compile-time static analysis checks including type errors!

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

#280

Post by frankzinger » Thu, Oct 10, 2013, 2:39 PM UTC

quchen wrote: post #214

perlgeek wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haskell?

Haskell has multiple concepts that are so compelling that I do not understand why most of the new languages make no use of them. Very handwavy, here are a couple of them. - Type inference: strong typing at the convenience of weak typing. (Some languages are moving towards this. C++ stapled on `auto` keywords, Rust is designed using it) - Type classes: unifying things that "can do X", allowing the programmer to write…

"- Type classes: unifying things that "can do X", allowing the programmer to write functions that do similar things but work on many different types. A "sort" function can then be written for all things that "are containers of elements that can be compared". (Again, Rust adopts this.)"

This is what templates do in C++.