Lombok makes Java cool again • Hacker News Board

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#51

Post by Tharkun » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:47 PM UTC

mohaine wrote: post #12

My main issue with Java is all the annotation based programming. Some of these are nice and can make the easy case super easy but if you need go even slightly off the easy path you seem to quickly loose all the time gained on the easy path. i.e. @GET(url=" http://host/users/$userid" ) public abstract User getUser(String userid) isn't that much easier than the python requests version but much harder if you need to add…

> My main issue with Java is all the annotation based programming.

That seems like an easy problem to solve. Don't use annotations.

Snark aside, it can be a bit of a tricky balancing act. When there are more annotations than actual code, that's a code smell in my book and something needs to change. Separating concerns usually does the trick. I'm heavy on code generation, so anything that's boring enough to benefit from oodles of annotations will probably end up getting generated based on a 2 line config file or something.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#52

Post by janslow » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

platelminto wrote: post #6

I'm interested in the downsides of using Lombok, since the article seems to only focus on its positives and makes it seem like I should download it and start using it right now. Is there anyone here with Lombok experience that wants to share any issues they've run into while using it? All I can think of right now is the fact that the source code isn't compatible with Java.

One of the issues is that it's tied quite heavily to the Java compiler, so you may need to wait until Lombok supports a new Java version before you can use it.

Also as it is compiler magic, it can be a bit confusing to developers who haven't used it before.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#53

Post by codesushi42 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 9:57 PM UTC

mattnewport wrote: post #38

chooseaname wrote: post #14

Java the language is cool. What the enterprise has done with it is not cool. Writing apps with layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of abstraction is ... self defeating. Then they'll holler, we need to rewrite it! All in the name of finding that one true architecture that can handle any business CR. Blech.

Java made some fundamental design decisions at its inception which look like fairly bad ones from today's perspective. It also introduced flawed versions of features like generics later. It also has some pretty poorly designed core libraries. What about it do you consider cool? I find it hard to think of anything I'd want to take from Java if designing a new language today. Even its bad design decisions have mostly b…

Genuinely curious, which language do you find is better designed?

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#54

Post by fcarraldo » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:03 PM UTC

shadowmatter wrote: post #21

platelminto wrote: post #6

I'm interested in the downsides of using Lombok, since the article seems to only focus on its positives and makes it seem like I should download it and start using it right now. Is there anyone here with Lombok experience that wants to share any issues they've run into while using it? All I can think of right now is the fact that the source code isn't compatible with Java.

I used it extensively while writing Java code at Airbnb. (It came included with Dropwizard, which we used for writing services.) Some people are uncomfortable with the extensive bytecode manipulation that it does. While Lombok provides annotations, it is not your normal annotation processor. From http://notatube.blogspot.com/2010/11/project-lombok-trick-ex... : > Project Lombok hooks itself into the compilation proce…

Lombok doesn't come included in Dropwizard.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#55

Post by zmmmmm » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:04 PM UTC

jkmcf wrote: post #16

Somewhat serious: LombokScript please. To quote @Retra in this thread: "I feel it is important for writing code to be fun". IMO, programming is fun when you are solving "business" problems, not writing boilerplate or handling a language's myriad edge cases.

I kind of agree, but I also find it curiously self-indulgent that as a profession software engineers feel entitled to discard technologies and methodologies because they are "not fun". Can you imagine civil engineers or electrical engineers saying that? They might enjoy working with certain technologies but would consider it highly unprofessional to demand that their projects be "fun" over other considerations.

NB: Groovy might be the closest thing to "LombokScript"

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#56

Post by zmmmmm » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

Even cooler is using a JVM language that builds many of these features in (my favorite is Groovy). Java will always be weighed down by the (necessary) baggage of backwards compatibility. I think companies still confining themselves to strictly using Java and nothing else are doing themselves a disservice when there are JVM languages that offer almost perfect compatibility at the bytecode level.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#57

Post by shadowmatter » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:08 PM UTC

fcarraldo wrote: post #54

shadowmatter wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used it extensively while writing Java code at Airbnb. (It came included with Dropwizard, which we used for writing services.) Some people are uncomfortable with the extensive bytecode manipulation that it does. While Lombok provides annotations, it is not your normal annotation processor. From http://notatube.blogspot.com/2010/11/project-lombok-trick-ex... : > Project Lombok hooks itself into the compilation proce…

Lombok doesn't come included in Dropwizard.

Oops! My mistake – you are absolutely correct. Lombok was just so pervasively used in our services, I assumed it came included as part of the Dropwizard toolbox.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#58

Post by rienbdj » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:11 PM UTC

I spent considerable time playing with Java and various usability extensions, but if I could go back I would have ditched Java much sooner. ML based languages really are an order of magnitude productivity boost.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#59

Post by viach » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:13 PM UTC

ganonm wrote: post #3

Lombok is a useful crutch if you're writing lots of Java code on a day to day basis. However, given how easy it is to use Kotlin alongside Java I would question whether Lombok is the right solution to the problem. Kotlin has data classes which auto generate sensible 'toString' and 'hashCode' methods which is a massive time saver. Really, if you are considering introducing Kotlin to a Java project I'd recommend you ju…

I see Kotlin as a great choice for these who don't want Java verbosity but can't really get used to read Scala.

Re: Lombok makes Java cool again

#60

Post by diegof79 » Thu, Jan 31, 2019, 10:14 PM UTC

I use the elements of programming from SICP[1] as a litmus test for this kind of frameworks.

The main issue with these annotation hacks is that they fail in the area of “means of combination” and “means of abstraction”.

For example if you have: @X @Y class Something{}

You cannot tell if X & Y can be combined (or how it’s combined), or you cannot easily create an abstraction Z with X and Y (you may be able to do that but it requires framework support and usually is painfully impractical)

It seems to be a small issue compared to the added value, but to me is not. As the code base grows the maintenance and debugging issues grow too... in the end probably is better to use Kotlin or Scala.

[1]: https://mitpress.mit.edu/sites/default/files/sicp/full-text/...