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>If you are stuck with a group of developers who have no interest in learning anything new and wish to use Java until they retire then Java is the only choice.

>If you are stuck with a group of developers who have no interest in learning anything new and wish to use Java until they retire then Java is the only choice. Put another way: if you're on a dev team where nobody knows Clojure/Scala, and everyone knows Java, (and, optionally, the codebase is already in Java), and your team doesn't have time for everyone to learn an entirely new language (including cleaning up the beginner's mistakes that come with that process), then Java's the better choice. Don't get me wrong, Java grinds my gears sometimes, and I frequently wish I could use Kotlin or F# or some kind of typed Ruby in my Java-shop workplace, and I enjoy picking up the cool ideas from languages like Idris (dependent types are really cool!) in my free time. But I'm sympathetic to my coworkers in the environment where I work: 4 devs in the whole company, startup pressure to get to a break-even point so we don't go under, and a backlog longer than all of us could finish this year even if we froze it now. Sometimes circumstances require what looks like a short-term decision in order to ensure that there's a long term to worry about later.

jinst8gmi 11y ago
With existing Java code and/or a tight timeline with existing skills I can see how that would be the best choice :) I'm thinking more in terms of the surprisingly high proportion of Java developers who have never learned another language since learning Java 10-15 years ago and dismiss any alternatives without ever exploring what else is out there (you clearly don't fall into that category :).
- pjmlp 11y ago
  This is quite typical in most companies where devs don't have trainings nor wish to spend time with work in their free time. I bet you will find thousands of C++ devs that don't even know that there are newer versions of C++98. C devs that still use K&R as their guide with C89 code style. And so on. We are the few select ones that care to improve our skills. EDIT: Typos.
  - vonmoltke 11y ago
    > I bet you will find thousands of C++ devs that don't even know that there are newer versions of C++98. Actually had a guy tell me (in 2006!) that the main problem with C++ was that there was no standard. :|
lmm 11y ago
You can write Java-without-semicolons in Scala and be productive from day 1, possibly even hour 1. Then you work up to fancier features as and when they provide a practical advantage. That's how I started.

jinst8gmi 11y ago

With existing Java code and/or a tight timeline with existing skills I can see how that would be the best choice :) I'm thinking more in terms of the surprisingly high proportion of Java developers who have never learned another language since learning Java 10-15 years ago and dismiss any alternatives without ever exploring what else is out there (you clearly don't fall into that category :).

pjmlp 11y ago
This is quite typical in most companies where devs don't have trainings nor wish to spend time with work in their free time. I bet you will find thousands of C++ devs that don't even know that there are newer versions of C++98. C devs that still use K&R as their guide with C89 code style. And so on. We are the few select ones that care to improve our skills. EDIT: Typos.
- vonmoltke 11y ago
  > I bet you will find thousands of C++ devs that don't even know that there are newer versions of C++98. Actually had a guy tell me (in 2006!) that the main problem with C++ was that there was no standard. :|

lmm 11y ago

You can write Java-without-semicolons in Scala and be productive from day 1, possibly even hour 1. Then you work up to fancier features as and when they provide a practical advantage. That's how I started.