An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1 • Hacker News Board

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#51

Post by exabrial » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:20 PM UTC

lmm wrote: post #36

The #1 thing you need to make Java usable is to abandon the JavaBean conventions. When every field requires 8 lines of boilerplate it's no wonder the code looks ugly (YAGNI, and if you do need it it's two keystrokes in your IDE to "encapsulate field"). public final fields are fine, and can get your data classes something close to readable. I'd stick with maven for the build rather than Gradle; it's completely declara…

Couldn't agree more. Use public, protected, private fields as they were meant to be used. I only dip into JavaBean anymore if I need a readable but non-writable field.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#52

Post by ramkalari » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:21 PM UTC

twistedpair wrote: post #11

bsaul wrote: post #6

I'm back to java after having an unsatisfying experience 2 years ago with Spring MVC, (this time i use the "play framework"), and it seems to confirm my intuition that the language itself is really just fine. The problem lies more in bloated frameworks and corporate culture where everything needs to be standardized, regulated, and the purpose of a mandatory non-free training session. Add to that the fact that every s…

How's Play! compare to Spring? I'm working on a bloated Spring whale (1.5M LoC, 485 Spring XML config files) and wondering if something like Play! can do it better, or if complexity is simply a beast that will inevitably turn any project into a turgid mass. I ask since friends at Google will laugh at a bar if you even say "Spring," but I'm curious what else can do it all (Guice/Gin?). Perhaps nothing can and the tric…

Play is simpler compared to Spring but idiomatic Play code also requires you to learn reactive programming, something you probably won't do in Spring MVC.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#53

Post by leorocky » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:21 PM UTC

I love Java, especially Java 8. But as the article points out, what frustrates me is threading. You can't do much without quickly running into threading issues. I played audio files in a game I made and it created up to 2,000 threads and crashed. Once I wrapped audio in an explicitly created thread this issue magically went away. Any kind of UI, timers, file I/O and network activity also involves threads.

The really horrible thing about these threads in Java is how hard it is to not share memory across them, because if you do terrible things happen. In other platforms you don't have to involve threads unless you want to, and you definitely aren't boxed into a situation where it becomes easy to accidentally share memory across theads.

I like Go's way of handling this. node.js is single threaded but the event loop makes it possible to do non-blocking IO without crazy Jave thread issues. Using synchronized, atomic properties and locks is not the right way to do these things as your code gets really complicated when trying to do basic things.

That gets me to my other pet peeve with Java. Just how much boiler plate there is to do basic things like opening up encrypted TLS TCP connections. Tons of cruft.

Anyway, having said that, I love Java and use it, but these things need addressing. I like Scala's Akka, I hope Java comes around and improves the horrible thread situation. I will have to check out Quasar. I know I just need to become more familiar with threading in Java in general. I'm actually pretty new to Java.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#54

Post by Consultant32452 » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:26 PM UTC

bsaul wrote: post #6

I'm back to java after having an unsatisfying experience 2 years ago with Spring MVC, (this time i use the "play framework"), and it seems to confirm my intuition that the language itself is really just fine. The problem lies more in bloated frameworks and corporate culture where everything needs to be standardized, regulated, and the purpose of a mandatory non-free training session. Add to that the fact that every s…

I kind of like that things are standardized/regulated in the Java space. If you're using anything close to industry standard tools and methodologies I can come in and be an effective member of your team faster. I know it can sometimes be more exciting to build something in a way no one else has ever built it before, but it's usually a bad business decision to do so.

This is one of the reasons why I still lament javascript. It seems like everyone and their mother is using a different framework to accomplish essentially the same task. The flavor of the week last exactly that long: a week.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#55

Post by UK-AL » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #3

netcraft wrote: post #2

What about dependency injection in modern java - is Guice or spring still the de facto standard?

I agree... can't live without Dependency Injection (one of the reasons I refuse to move off of Java). I've been using CDI and TomEE for small simple stuff (it just works). Can't stand Spring Framework anymore. It set out to replace the bloatware of Java EE 1.5 but it ended up becoming what it was meant to replace.

What web framework can use that works with CDI, and standard EE stuff that is request-repoonse based?

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#56

Post by neverminder » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:28 PM UTC

twistedpair wrote: post #11

bsaul wrote: post #6

I'm back to java after having an unsatisfying experience 2 years ago with Spring MVC, (this time i use the "play framework"), and it seems to confirm my intuition that the language itself is really just fine. The problem lies more in bloated frameworks and corporate culture where everything needs to be standardized, regulated, and the purpose of a mandatory non-free training session. Add to that the fact that every s…

How's Play! compare to Spring? I'm working on a bloated Spring whale (1.5M LoC, 485 Spring XML config files) and wondering if something like Play! can do it better, or if complexity is simply a beast that will inevitably turn any project into a turgid mass. I ask since friends at Google will laugh at a bar if you even say "Spring," but I'm curious what else can do it all (Guice/Gin?). Perhaps nothing can and the tric…

I while ago I had to choose a JVM based MVC framework to work with and originally I was looking at Spring. Needless to say it's a Mount Everest of frameworks, so by looking for alternatives I've stumbled upon Play. I decided to go the whole way and use Scala with it. Never looked back since. Typesafe stack offered me a rock solid Scala/Play/Akka/Slick stack with type safety, scalability, immutability, concurency that few others have (if any).

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#57

Post by UK-AL » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:30 PM UTC

revscat wrote: post #43

laureny wrote: post #39

Not a single mention of Guice or even dependency injection? Seems like a gaping omission in a guide that claims to be about "modern" Java.

Dependency injection has seen its day. The gains promised by DI/IoC containers tend to be outweighed by the complexity they introduce. I'm looking at you, Spring.

Adding @Inject is hard now?

Most DI frameworks automatically configure, and register objects. So literally all you need to add is the annotation.

Then you can override the automatic registration with you own, with different implementation when required.

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#58

Post by umut » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:32 PM UTC

twistedpair wrote: post #11

bsaul wrote: post #6

I'm back to java after having an unsatisfying experience 2 years ago with Spring MVC, (this time i use the "play framework"), and it seems to confirm my intuition that the language itself is really just fine. The problem lies more in bloated frameworks and corporate culture where everything needs to be standardized, regulated, and the purpose of a mandatory non-free training session. Add to that the fact that every s…

How's Play! compare to Spring? I'm working on a bloated Spring whale (1.5M LoC, 485 Spring XML config files) and wondering if something like Play! can do it better, or if complexity is simply a beast that will inevitably turn any project into a turgid mass. I ask since friends at Google will laugh at a bar if you even say "Spring," but I'm curious what else can do it all (Guice/Gin?). Perhaps nothing can and the tric…

I can strongly recommend Dropwizard for the plan. It is much less stuffy/enterprisy and you can easily split big apps into smaller services. It is some glue code on top of Jersey run in embedded mode Jetty (thus very little ops work needed). Play Framework is also nice, but a bit too much opinionated! Meaning hard to make it do something in another way, which happens in real world big applications...

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#59

Post by stcredzero » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:33 PM UTC

leorocky wrote: post #53

I love Java, especially Java 8. But as the article points out, what frustrates me is threading. You can't do much without quickly running into threading issues. I played audio files in a game I made and it created up to 2,000 threads and crashed. Once I wrapped audio in an explicitly created thread this issue magically went away. Any kind of UI, timers, file I/O and network activity also involves threads. The really…

Using synchronized, atomic properties and locks is not the right way to do these things as your code gets really complicated when trying to do basic things.

One point being made in the op is that you don't have to. Of course, you may be constrained by how the libraries you want to use are structured, but I don't think this is necessarily the case. What if you used the op author's actor framework?

Re: An Opinionated Guide to Modern Java Development, Part 1

#60

Post by dk8996 » Thu, May 01, 2014, 5:34 PM UTC

leorocky wrote: post #53

I love Java, especially Java 8. But as the article points out, what frustrates me is threading. You can't do much without quickly running into threading issues. I played audio files in a game I made and it created up to 2,000 threads and crashed. Once I wrapped audio in an explicitly created thread this issue magically went away. Any kind of UI, timers, file I/O and network activity also involves threads. The really…

There is nothing wrong with Java Threads, it gives you low-level access which can be complicated and cumbersome but, when mastered, can be powerful. I believe that Akka uses Java Threads underneath the covers.