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Stop hating Java

andrzejonsoftware.blogspot.com

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Re: Stop hating Java

#131

Post by msluyter »

bmm6o wrote: post #116
msluyter wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard people say that, but if that's true, why didn't they include many of the (much more commonly used, IME) patterns like Big Ball of Mud, Stovepipe System, Spaghetti Code, etc...? There's lots of nightmarish patterns/techniques that were omitted. I find no plausible way to account for that other than that the patterns are (perhaps implicitly) prescriptive.

Those are covered in the anti-pattern book.

Reinforcing my point. If those are "anti" patterns, they must be bad, right? Hence, patterns as described in GoF are good.

Re: Stop hating Java

#133

Post by a5seo »

onemoreact wrote: post #93
a5seo wrote: post #67

Another reason to stop hating on Java is that in a lot of cities, it would be a fool's errand to assemble another kind of dev team. Like Ruby? Great. Good luck building a team in Omaha. Skills go where the jobs are: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=ruby&l=Omaha%2C+NE = 11 jobs http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=j2ee&l=Omaha%2C+NE = 101 jobs Bottom line: if you expect to hire developers, in most places, you'll want a language w…

Unless you have horrable retention issues highering someone who does not know the language your using is not that big of an issue. Taking a C# ASP.NET developer > Ruby on rails is faster than bringing a Java developer who knows nothing about the web into a large Spring/Struts project.

That might be true for a basic/early Rails app where it's ok to have script kiddie relationship with Ruby, but if you have a more complex app, I don't think the learning curve is quite as easy as you're making it sound.

My own experience with Rail is that I quickly wanted to see inside and control all of the implicit stuff that was going on, and I needed to invest a lot more time to learn Ruby to have the knowledge that would give the amount of control I wanted.

Re: Stop hating Java

#134

Post by a5seo »

run4yourlives wrote: post #114
a5seo wrote: post #67

Another reason to stop hating on Java is that in a lot of cities, it would be a fool's errand to assemble another kind of dev team. Like Ruby? Great. Good luck building a team in Omaha. Skills go where the jobs are: http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=ruby&l=Omaha%2C+NE = 11 jobs http://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=j2ee&l=Omaha%2C+NE = 101 jobs Bottom line: if you expect to hire developers, in most places, you'll want a language w…

Hiring any programmer that can't adapt to an unfamiliar new language is a bad idea (TM). I'm far from a guru, but I've been able to pick up quite a few different languages, frameworks and structures over my tenure. It's the ones that limit themselves to a single language (be it Java or not) for long periods of time that you need to worry about. These are the programmers that will build a square wheel because that's w…

That's cool, but when I'm hiring a team and paying their salaries with my own money, I'm just not going to bank on transitioning anyone from X to Y. No time for it, no appetite for the risk. But if you raise VC, more power to you.

Re: Stop hating Java

#135

Post by a5seo »

bromagosa wrote: post #112
Fid wrote: post #100

Job search in New York City on Dice.com: Java - 2698 Ruby - 204 Even within the Ruby jobs, the majority have a Java requirement within them as well. Been hearing Ruby aficionados for like a decade, but sorry, it just hasn't penetrated.

I think this metric is invalid, the market rarely takes what's best, but rather what's trendy. Before you begin to troll me, what I'm saying is that >>the metric is not valid<<, not that one language is better than the other.

One thing I've learned is that your language/framework is an HR decision.

The jobs metric tells me that if you hope to hire >>experiencedI'm not saying you can't hire good programmers and give them a few months to transition, but that wouldn't work for my bootstrapped startup that's planning to ship product in 90 days.

You might say, yeah, but with 2k Java jobs, you have to compete against a lot of employers. Personally, I'd rather take my chances with a deeper pool of Java talent that I can out recruit the competition.

Re: Stop hating Java

#136

Post by bethling »

msluyter wrote: post #131
bmm6o wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are covered in the anti-pattern book.

Reinforcing my point. If those are "anti" patterns, they must be bad, right? Hence, patterns as described in GoF are good.

I think there's a line between "These are patterns that we have seen work" and "These are good patterns so use them". Back when I first read the book, I was pretty junior and I remember thinking "oh! I can use this...and this!". And built "wonderfully" over-architected code. Now I'll run into situations where after I starting working on some the solution I have resembles a pattern - and it's nice to be able to use common terms that the other developers will understand when you discuss it.

They're not 'Do this, and you'll have good code', they're just an observation that good code may often use many of these patterns - not because they're forced in there, but because the solution simply maps well to that kind of model.

Re: Stop hating Java

#139

Post by masklinn »

glassx wrote: post #45
xutopia wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in what is essentially a Java shop and the opposite is true for me. The Java programmers work on the data set and provide me with an API. My responsibility is to present the data using a Rails application in a sound UI and in the fastest way possible. They often make remarks about how Rails is easy and Java programming is where real men make their mark. I think this comes down to a need for people to feel prou…

The opposite is true for me too. I've had an Enterprise Java guy telling me once that "programming and Object Orientation got lost with those simpler, easy-to-use language and frameworks", referring to Ruby and Rails. I dunno about that. Alan Kay would probably say that it got lost with C++ and Java, but YMMV. Also, one word: speed. But... I don't really think it boils down to this, it's not like one is better than t…

> I've had an Enterprise Java guy telling me once that "programming and Object Orientation got lost with those simpler, easy-to-use language and frameworks", referring to Ruby and Rails.

You did tell him Ruby is roughly as old as Java, Python is older and Smalltalk predates Java by almost 15 years right?

Re: Stop hating Java

#140

Post by masklinn »

dpark wrote: post #86

We seem to have a rather short institutional memory. It wasn't that long ago (Java's only as old as Ruby) that Java was new and hailed as a savior from C++ and C. Java was widely seen as a great language, or at least a language that presented a great improvement over the existing mainstream languages. It gave GC to the masses for the first time. It delivered standard-sized primitives, an (almost) everything's-an-obje…

> Java has a lot of issues, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a pretty good language.

Definitely not. Especially not in this day and age. Java has a pretty good language, java has a good ecosystem, java has a passable standard library, but in 2011 java is a crummy language.

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