Stop hating Java • Hacker News Board

Re: Stop hating Java

#31

Post by perlgeek » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:41 PM UTC

I don't hate Java, I just don't want to use it.

I find it ridiculously verbose, and the lack of closures (or even passing around code references) leads to the perceived overengineering mentioned in the post (I'm not sure it's really overengineering all the time - it's just that a rather rigid language forces you to write huge amounts of code to make your library flexible).

That said I have no problem with using programs written in Java - in that case somebody else has already dealt with the things I don't like about Java.

Re: Stop hating Java

#32

Post by bo1024 » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:43 PM UTC

16s wrote: post #12

It's been my experience that most people who put down Java or C++ or [your language here] have never seriously used the language and are insecure about learning a new language so they make fun of other languages to hide their insecurity. Edit: I'll also add that this is not limited to the Ruby community. One last edit: General Patton once said, "Find what a man is cynical about, and you will know his weaknesses." or…

Java and C++ were the first languages I learned, and I used them exclusively for about 5 years (mainly C++). I simply don't like either language. I think they have both have a lot of problems and downsides.

I'm not guaranteeing that this is true in an objective sense, but then again I can't guarantee that anything is true in an objective sense (I'm no philosopher). However, take a lot of people with a similar opinion and the voices tend to add up.

Re: Stop hating Java

#33

Post by DanielRibeiro » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:44 PM UTC

bromagosa wrote: post #25

mullr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't. The wiki tells us that it was first used in 1990, somewhat before Java was on the scene. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_refactoring#History

Right, http://books.google.com/books?id=1MsETFPD3I0C&lpg=PP1&#3... It actually came from Smalltalk, just for a change.

Well, Unit Tests also came from it (SUnit was the first Unit Test framework). Which is unsurprising, as refactoring without unit tests is quite daunting.

But JUnit did make them mainstream, and so did Eclipse' refactorings.

Re: Stop hating Java

#34

Post by yesimahuman » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:45 PM UTC

Java is awesome purely because of the large corpus of useful libraries. Apache, stanford NLP, etc. Universities and open source groups contribute a large amount of Java code and it really pushes the boundaries of the types of applications you can create that are mature and perform well.

Other than that I develop much faster in Python or Javascript. I've come to love treating functions as first class objects, and I just don't love static typing that much anymore.

Getting my projects done more quickly has become more important than anything else. It just so happens that other languages than Java are better for that.

Re: Stop hating Java

#35

Post by PaulHoule » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

strmpnk wrote: post #10

This hardly starts to address the things people dislike about Java. Sure, it's a capable language - the JVM even more so. The thing is, it hasn't kept up with the pace of everything else. The JCP is clearly broken. The best thing for people would be to move on, not in anger but to explore as many languages as possible. Java could very well be the best thing for some BUT you can't really say until you go out and look.…

That's an important point.

When Java came out it was a big step forward for a lot of people. Most of the scripting languages with OO features (Ruby, Python, PHP) have a lot of Java influence.

I see the problem is that Java stopped evolving a decade ago. C# shows the kind of path that a Java-like language can follow to get better, and Java just hasn't been moving.

Re: Stop hating Java

#36

Post by snorkel » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:46 PM UTC

Two other reasons I avoid Java the dependencies ecosystem for a typical Java app is bloated and always changing, and it didn't really live up to the promise of write-once-run-anywhere. And by the way, the over-abstraction habit is really annoying when you're trying to write a simple util app and you can't just say foo = new Foo() instead you have to extra nonsense such as factory = new FooParamsFactory() then fooparams = factory.getFooParams() then then foo = new Foo(fooparams) ... it's nice to get away from that nonsense. I just find Java to the playpen of architecture astronauts who would rather design APIs than write apps.

Re: Stop hating Java

#37

Post by swah » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:48 PM UTC

The part that I don't like is when I can't write a webapp in Java because I don't know about Hibernate and JBoss and Maven and servlets and JDBC and more. I'd love to try a strict language, having used only Clojure and Python lately. Playframework might be an alternative.

Re: Stop hating Java

#38

Post by evilduck » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:48 PM UTC

yock wrote: post #8

All you need to do to experience this first hand is go to one Ruby meetup. The roundtable introductions at my local Ruby brigade are often seasoned with AA-like declarations of soberness such as "Hi, I'm So-and-so and I've been Java-free since 2006." As a Java pro (and someone who really does like Java) it's a little disheartening. On one hand I know they don't really mean to belittle the technology that pays my bill…

There's a definite stigma attached to Java for where the tool is used most. I'd bet nine times out of ten, a randomly chosen programmer's previous Java experience was a Dilbert job. Proclaiming yourself "free of Java" should probably be worded "escaped from a corporate cube farm". I doubt they care that much about Java, especially with the buzz around JRuby and Mirah.

Re: Stop hating Java

#39

Post by zeemonkee » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:48 PM UTC

I think a lot of the Java hate is because of the architecture astronauts who hijacked the language in the last decade - J2EE/EJB, the GoF, FactoryFactoryFactory shit and so on. I remember seeing the earlier versions of the servlet API and it was very elegant and well designed; unfortunately once the astronauts were through with it writing Java web apps became such a form of mental torture (Struts, anyone?) that even PHP was a welcome relief, let alone Rails. My hate for it came from having to use some shitty app server like WebSphere because the coding-averse CTO considered it a "standard".

Looking at more recent work such as the lovely Play framework and the influence of new JVM languages such as Clojure and Scala, it looks like things are improving in Java-land. It's still a bit dated and clunky compared to Ruby and Python (let alone Clojure/Scala or even Groovy) but it's not as bad as people make out.

Re: Stop hating Java

#40

Post by nirvdrum » Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 1:49 PM UTC

andrewvc wrote: post #30

nirvdrum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm totally fine with different strokes for different folks. But I don't buy the productivity argument. For any reasonably sized project, productivity tends to level out regardless of language or platform.

Oh really..... try building a large scale web app in Forth then. Tools matter, at every scale.

So your counter example is a relatively obscure language? I don't know Forth, but I'd imagine someone well-versed in it could handle the task. In any event I didn't say it was categorically the case. I said tends to be the case. We could go case / counter-case all day.

I can bootstrap a project in Ruby or Python considerably faster than I can in Java. But when it comes time to scale, Java usually -- not always, but most of the time -- wins out. They all can do it. None is really more expressive than any other. It's just the level of effort involved. And the pros and cons of each usually start to even out as a project grows.