New language features since Java 8 to 17 • Hacker News Board

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#11

Post by ISL » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #7

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t follow why this is unfortunate?

A lot of people have migrated away from Java to better JVM languages. If Java actually keeps improving, there's a reasonable likelihood that people will stop migrating and those that have may come back to Java from these other langs. Long term this could lead to a loss of maintenance for tools and libraries for these languages which could kill them and leave those that migrated with a dead & decaying ecosystem. Of co…

If people left Java for other language(s), wouldn't that leave Java with a decaying ecosystem?

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#12

Post by Smaug123 » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #2

Unfortunately it looks like Java is going to evolve enough to take the wind out of the sails of Kotlin and Scala for most dev shops. I guess the positive take is that those improvements might not have happened without the efforts to develop better JVM languages.

I think one could argue exactly the same thing for the same reasons about C# vs F# on .NET, which is my area of expertise - but honestly I'm not so sure it's true. C# has grown into an enormous language as it tries (consciously or not) to subsume F#, and F# is always going to remain so much cleaner just because you aren't having to ignore 90% of the language features when you code in it.

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#13

Post by cageface » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:07 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #4

cageface wrote: post #2

Unfortunately it looks like Java is going to evolve enough to take the wind out of the sails of Kotlin and Scala for most dev shops. I guess the positive take is that those improvements might not have happened without the efforts to develop better JVM languages.

I don’t follow why this is unfortunate?

What I don't want to see happen is innovation stop in JVM languages and then Java, no longer under threat, also stops innovating.

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#14

Post by spockz » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:13 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #11

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have migrated away from Java to better JVM languages. If Java actually keeps improving, there's a reasonable likelihood that people will stop migrating and those that have may come back to Java from these other langs. Long term this could lead to a loss of maintenance for tools and libraries for these languages which could kill them and leave those that migrated with a dead & decaying ecosystem. Of co…

If people left Java for other language(s), wouldn't that leave Java with a decaying ecosystem?

Most of them stayed somewhere on the jvm though. Still in the ecosystem.

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#15

Post by rdpintqogeogsaa » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

I've been bitten by bitwise operations on signed integers a few too many times. Are there any plans on having normal unsigned integer types yet?

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#16

Post by Sevaris » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:15 PM UTC

ISL wrote: post #11

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people have migrated away from Java to better JVM languages. If Java actually keeps improving, there's a reasonable likelihood that people will stop migrating and those that have may come back to Java from these other langs. Long term this could lead to a loss of maintenance for tools and libraries for these languages which could kill them and leave those that migrated with a dead & decaying ecosystem. Of co…

If people left Java for other language(s), wouldn't that leave Java with a decaying ecosystem?

Maybe worry about leveling the playing field first? There's so much money and research and development going into Java that there's no possible way for Java to end up with a "decaying ecosystem" inside the next twenty years. It's like pointing out DuckDuckGo and worrying about Google.

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#17

Post by sushsjsuauahab » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

Missing var in java 9?

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#18

Post by pjmlp » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #2

Unfortunately it looks like Java is going to evolve enough to take the wind out of the sails of Kotlin and Scala for most dev shops. I guess the positive take is that those improvements might not have happened without the efforts to develop better JVM languages.

Except without Java they are meaningless.

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#19

Post by tomcam » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:20 PM UTC

Fantastic article for a language-curious person who doesn’t know Java well.

Re: New language features since Java 8 to 17

#20

Post by 5e92cb50239222b » Sun, Oct 24, 2021, 5:21 PM UTC

cageface wrote: post #2

Unfortunately it looks like Java is going to evolve enough to take the wind out of the sails of Kotlin and Scala for most dev shops. I guess the positive take is that those improvements might not have happened without the efforts to develop better JVM languages.

This happens all the time with "guest" languages. A few old salts have been prophesying this right here on HN since Kotlin first came out. I think it'll still be used on Android though, it's hard to see Google pushing Android development back to Java.