Stop hating Java

First, let me point out that once again we are comparing Java - a runtime, a language platform and an entire ecosystem comprising many frameworks - with Rails, a specific web framework designed with a specific philosophy (opinionated defaults that work in 90% of cases, YAGNI, etc.) for a specific range of uses ("rapidly prototyping a small-to-moderately sized web site").

So just because Rails developers hate something doesn't mean it's generally evil. It might just be wrong for Rails. Many things are; otherwise Rails would have no texture. Saying no to things is what design is about.

Now let's talk about hate. Everyone hates something. There is nothing wrong with hating things. Hate is just personal taste turned up to eleven. You should strive to hate politely and with grace, to realize that other people love the things you hate and are nonetheless human, and probably even smart. And you should strive to remember that there's an important difference between the things you hate and things that objectively suck. Java, for example, does not suck. Not always. Lots of work has gone into it. Lots of Java-based tools are essential. There are big classes of problem for which Java is currently the best solution.

Nonetheless, I hate Java. It is a handy mental shortcut, one that has yet to lead me astray. My belief is that the problems for which Java-the-language is the solution are problems I don't want to work on, and that I don't have enough time in my life to address the problems I do want to work on, so I should simply develop a Java allergy that kicks in whenever I see the generics syntax and that causes my eyes to water until I flee towards fresh air. It works well.

(What's sad is when you find yourself hating something that is smack-dab in the middle of a set of problems that you want to work on. Hello, PHP! This requires a much richer set of coping techniques than simple allergic avoidance.)

(And, of course, Java is not just a language, and JRuby appears, from the outside, to be awesome, and my curiosity about Clojure is rising, so I may soon temper my simple hatred of Java into a rich melange of love and hate. The stuff of which novels are born, really.)

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.

JRebel isn't applicable to Play - Play (both when running Java and Scala) hosts its own compiler. In dev mode, when you change a .java or .scala file, it recompiles it and reloads it on the fly.

Which is why Play is freaking awesome--well, one of the reasons.

I've worked in shops where GoF ruled. Everything was a factory, even the things that /weren't/ factories were being /called/ factories, and there were zillions of singletons peppering the landscape.

"You've got a singleton class with a single method and no members . . . why don't you make this thing a function?"

"Uh, it wouldn't be a pattern then, would it. Um, would it?"

And the XML. Oh, dear Lord. I have a doctor's slip now stating that I am allergic to XML and that's the reason I'm breaking out in hives, whooping for air and leaving the room.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened to the software industry if the entries in GoF had been written in a different order. Would we see a plague of Visitors and Observers?

“If you drop static methods, then welcome to Java and its billions of useless factories.”

And if you use them everywhere, then welcome to Rails, where to service more than 1 request at a time you actually have to run multiple instances of the whole app behind a balancer.