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Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

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Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#3
Isn’t this just what occurs when you move beyond a single language? I wouldn’t say he discovered how much better nodejs was over java, so much as he discovered that java isn’t the only way to do things; he would have probably had a similar epiphany with go, rust, smalltalk, clojure, haskell or pretty much any other not-java language.

Imo this more an argument towards expanding beyond a single language/ecosystem; hopefully the author doesn’t make the same mistake with nodejs, nestling in and never moving beyond it for 10 years until finally realizing there might just be another way

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#4
post #2

It is sounds like the author is more fed up with the Java ecosystem rather than Java itself.

And a particular subset of it at that. Spring isn't the only choice, neither is Hibernate, both of which I also loathe.

I'll admit, I prefer Kotlin to Java, but I find the JVM based ecosystem a joy.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#5
It's not Java, it's the java culture.

Yes, Maven and Gradle are weirdly complex, but they are workable. And .jar files are just downright amazing compared to most other things (I'm looking at you madman Python dependencies!)

Hint: maybe you could come up with something like npm for Java ? Maybe it's waiting to happen?

And Javadocs are mundane but still better than 'nodocs' which is the standard on Node.js which really needs to change, and could start with some standardization and leadership from somewhere ... maybe the Typescript team?

Oh, and also, since everything is JSON, and that blends nicely with JS ... my god man that's so much nicer than JSON/XML in Java which is often unwiedy.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#6
I don't really care what this guys credentials are; he claims npm and yarn are better than maven and gradle but doesn't bother explaining why (and it's evident he hasn't used gradle)

Nor has he moved beyond a Java 6 mindset considering the things he complains about in terms of modularity, verbosity and even strict type checking.

The fact that he thinks that the IDE race is between Eclipse and Netbeans is telling.

As far as boilerplate and unneeded code goes, he is correct. Spring, Hibernate and Spring Boot removes code, and results in some arcane problems that you shouldn't need to learn about. Now, let's discuss the React ecosystem: explain to me the purity of intent behind an application that requires: - action classes/files - reducer classes/files - possibly route classes/files - a "store" - a component to set a variable, complete with the half dozen packages required to enable this behaviour. Not everyone has to do this, but when creating a React application with the kind of scope that a Java application often requires, this is an inevitably, and a LOT of work for a supposedly simple task. If there is an error, you are similarly going through a stack trace of weird abstract classes, except they are in a bundle file which is equally impossible to parse.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#7

It's not Java, it's the java culture. Yes, Maven and Gradle are weirdly complex, but they are workable. And .jar files are just downright amazing compared to most other things (I'm looking at you madman Python dependencies!) Hint: maybe you could come up with something like npm for Java ? Maybe it's waiting to happen? And Javadocs are mundane but still better than 'nodocs' which is the standard on Node.js which reall…

What's wrong with python dependcies? It's literally a small requirements file. If anything npm and js is the shit show for that.

Re: Why is a Java guy so excited about Node.js and JavaScript?

#10

I don't really care what this guys credentials are; he claims npm and yarn are better than maven and gradle but doesn't bother explaining why (and it's evident he hasn't used gradle) Nor has he moved beyond a Java 6 mindset considering the things he complains about in terms of modularity, verbosity and even strict type checking. The fact that he thinks that the IDE race is between Eclipse and Netbeans is telling. As…

Being nitpicky here: you mention this somewhat in your comment, but I just want to stress that redux is absolutely not necessary to your react application (though a lot of beginners think it is a "must know" because every blog article says you need to know it). React in and of itself allows you to achieve the same functionality of redux (and a fairly complex app) without the need for a bunch of boilerplate code. Of course, if you deeply understand redux and its purpose, it can make creating large apps less of a hassle, but there's nothing in react that says you must use redux to make a complex app.
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