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JDK 8 Release Notes

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Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#131

Post by Terr_ »

ephemeralgomi wrote: post #92
mbillie1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sort of reaction is surprising to me. Java has been a useable, performant language for some time now. The tooling is excellent, the JVM is astonishingly good, and it will run circles around Python, no less Perl. I don't think many of the arguments against Java are based on how it works once you've written it, but rather to the horrendous verbosity, class-explosion-as-a-design-pattern, painfulness to read (not de…

> painfulness to read (not debug with an IDE, which is easy, but to actually read Java code) This is incredibly important and I never see any Java advocate addressing it. I _do_ see tons of people pointing out how easy it is to automate refactoring, and then they leave dozens of ugly, poorly-thought-out methods lying around...

The problem is that there are two major kinds of "reading code".

There's (A) the brief pass you do to get the gist of what a class/method does, and (B) the deeper pass when you try to build a mental model and step through bits of code in your head.

While Java's verbosity does harm skimming, it also aids targeted comprehension, since it is easier to see the "one right behavior" that code has. Fewer sneaky surprises, leaky abstractions, weird type coercions, inferring which class-interface the designer intended to target, etc.

As mentioned already, the other big advantage to explicit-ness is all the static analysis the IDE can do for you.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#132

Post by tormeh »

elwell wrote: post #57
bane wrote: post #4

You know, I've been messing around with Java little lately. Nothing too fancy. It's actually not a bad language -- with a modern IDE it's actually pretty quick and breezy to work with. If the standard library was cleaned up and the warts were all removed and filled in, even if it broke compatibility (call it Java X or the Latte language or something) I'd be okay with that. There's too much old 90's cruft hanging arou…

> lots of over-objectizing everything This. This is what I think of when I think of Java.

Object orientation isn't a bad thing per se, but everything should be done in moderation and, well, the argument can certainly be made that Java has gone a bit or two too far.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#133

Post by meddlepal »

mercurial wrote: post #123
cia_plant wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually, Java is a really bad language. It has a very complicated type system, but doesn't even allow you to express things like function composition or generic sums at the language level. Its syntax is stunningly verbose (e.g., no map literals; only now adding lambda literals; no type synonyms; no operator overloading). There is no macro system or method_missing or any other way of really extending the language…

> It has a very complicated type system, but doesn't even allow you to express things like function composition or generic sums at the language level. Yeah, sure, it doesn't have Haskell's . or algebraic datatypes, just like lots of other languages. I'm not sure what's complicated about the Java type system, but I suspect you're trying to say you don't like subtyping. Moving on... > Its syntax is stunningly verbose (…

Checked Exceptions and null. I write a lot of Java and I generally enjoy the language, but those two things; if Oracle could fix those somehow I would be extremely pleased. I'm so tired of writing null checks and I hope Optional is not the final answer since it too can be a null due to programmer error. I am really worried about Optional getting abused in Java 8...

Actually, I waffle on checked exceptions; it seems every 8 months or so I have a different opinion of them. Right now they suck.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#134

Post by peterashford »

cia_plant wrote: post #93
bane wrote: post #4

You know, I've been messing around with Java little lately. Nothing too fancy. It's actually not a bad language -- with a modern IDE it's actually pretty quick and breezy to work with. If the standard library was cleaned up and the warts were all removed and filled in, even if it broke compatibility (call it Java X or the Latte language or something) I'd be okay with that. There's too much old 90's cruft hanging arou…

No, actually, Java is a really bad language. It has a very complicated type system, but doesn't even allow you to express things like function composition or generic sums at the language level. Its syntax is stunningly verbose (e.g., no map literals; only now adding lambda literals; no type synonyms; no operator overloading). There is no macro system or method_missing or any other way of really extending the language…

Java is not a bad language. It was written as a reaction to C++ - a simpler, more consistent systems programming language. In that regard it has been wildly successful. It doesn't really look like a dynamically typed scripting language because it was never trying to be one.

You pick a bunch of language flavour / syntactic sugar and say that Java is bad because it doesn't have those. Personally I like it because it doesn't have things like operator overloading. These are you own preferences, not inherent flaws with the language.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#136

Post by discreteevent »

mercurial wrote: post #123
cia_plant wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, actually, Java is a really bad language. It has a very complicated type system, but doesn't even allow you to express things like function composition or generic sums at the language level. Its syntax is stunningly verbose (e.g., no map literals; only now adding lambda literals; no type synonyms; no operator overloading). There is no macro system or method_missing or any other way of really extending the language…

> It has a very complicated type system, but doesn't even allow you to express things like function composition or generic sums at the language level. Yeah, sure, it doesn't have Haskell's . or algebraic datatypes, just like lots of other languages. I'm not sure what's complicated about the Java type system, but I suspect you're trying to say you don't like subtyping. Moving on... > Its syntax is stunningly verbose (…

Optional in jdk8 will help with null:

http://download.java.net/jdk8/docs/api/java/util/Optional.ht...

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#137

Post by stusmall »

meddlepal wrote: post #133
mercurial wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It has a very complicated type system, but doesn't even allow you to express things like function composition or generic sums at the language level. Yeah, sure, it doesn't have Haskell's . or algebraic datatypes, just like lots of other languages. I'm not sure what's complicated about the Java type system, but I suspect you're trying to say you don't like subtyping. Moving on... > Its syntax is stunningly verbose (…

Checked Exceptions and null. I write a lot of Java and I generally enjoy the language, but those two things; if Oracle could fix those somehow I would be extremely pleased. I'm so tired of writing null checks and I hope Optional is not the final answer since it too can be a null due to programmer error. I am really worried about Optional getting abused in Java 8... Actually, I waffle on checked exceptions; it seems e…

I'm the same way with checked exceptions. Right now I am in the pro-camp... but just give me a little bit. I am about to start a greenfield jvm project so I think I will be anti soon... but once its mature and I'm in bug fix mode I'll be heading back to the pro-camp.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#138

Post by peterashford »

brown9-2 wrote: post #81
michaelt wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you aspire to make Java into the type of language we would arrive at if we redesigned Java from scratch today, it's not just a matter of adding good features but also removing bad ones. For example, you'd go directly to Joda-Time or JSR-310. Date and Calendar wouldn't be present at all. Whether Java should break compatibility to remove all the old cruft I'm not sure. The benefits of the cleaner design might not be…

Is there any major language out there that actively removes old/bad parts of it's standard library?

None that have been successful, and this is the nub of the problem.

It's like Soupstrain said: there are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses.

A side effect of success is having a large body of existing code to consider when making changes.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#139

Post by peterashford »

bradleyjg wrote: post #38
jpitz wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are warts in the standard library to be sure, but many of them have already been filled in by third parties like Apache Commons, Google Guava, and Joda-time. I'm sure there are others I'm not thinking of.

Filing in the holes is nice, but without actually making it a design choice java embodies TMTOWTDI more than perl ever did. For many common tasks there are 5 or 6 different standard library calls that seem to do the same thing, but 4 of them are to be avoided at all cost, but there's no depreciation tag and the official javadocs don't contain any pointers to the newer classes.

Oh rubbish. What utter FUD.

Re: JDK 8 Release Notes

#140

Post by edwinnathaniel »

puppetmaster3 wrote: post #115
edwinnathaniel wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a good sign. Y'all JS devs need to learn something from Java community (especially the engineering/quality side) even if you guys have to go through the pain of Java growth (small => medium => bloated => denial => acceptance => cleaning up => shaping up for the future).

It's a bad sign for .js devs: trouble ahead.

JS ecosystems in terms of quality, tooling, and engineering is already bad, can't be worse than that really...

PS: No, yet-another-js-library-to-replace-jquery is not considered tooling. No, yet-another-replacement-for-grunt/bower/yeoman is not a good sign of the ecosystems. Java has Maven since 2004.

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