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I don't like Oracle. I don't like the JVM. I refuse to learn Java because I personally have a strong bias for native, compiled code. In fact, I really dislike e

I don't like Oracle. I don't like the JVM. I refuse to learn Java because I personally have a strong bias for native, compiled code. In fact, I really dislike everything about the Java way of programming. The mental image of a huge ram sucking IDE with code completion for frameworks is simply incompatible with what I would consider the ideal creative process for me as programmer. That being said, if I were starting a web service as a business today, it would be very hard to persuade me to not choose Java. It's simply the best platform from a business perspective. For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. This makes it very easy to hire Java developers. Java has stability, Java has concurrency, Java has hot reloading, Java has a good track record, Java scales, Java has really nice functional programming support, and Java is very popular with the everyday programmer. It Java has so many benefits outside of it's technical or philosophical specifications, that it's almost an obvious choice to me for web. What's funny is that Erlang is the ideal platform for me from an idealist perspective, but I don't think I have the luck or experience it takes to successfully start an internet company with Erlang.

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johan_larson 11y ago
For my money, Java is a pretty good language; there are only a couple of things that I think were real mistakes in the core language. And the JVM certainly performs. But the ecosystem around Java is very complex and hard to manage. Dealing with JVM configuration, webserver configuration, build system configuration, IDE configuration and God knows what else takes up all kinds of brain-space. And every so often the community goes off on some crusade. Everything must be Design Patterns. Everything must be specified in XML. Everything must be a Bean. No, everything must be Injection. No, no, everything must be Annotation. The Java culture really needs to learn the value of the simple and explicit.
- joelg236 11y ago
  > And every so often the community goes off on some crusade. Everything must be Design Patterns. Everything must be specified in XML. Everything must be a Bean. No, everything must be Injection. No, no, everything must be Annotation. You couldn't have described this better for me. This is my exact frustration with the ecosystem, and it's the only thing that keeps me from using Java as my default language of choice. The language itself can be used very well, just wish the tooling was more concise and functional.
- stcredzero 11y ago
  > culture really needs to learn the value of the simple and explicit. This is true for any programming community.
  - paulddraper 11y ago
    "Compile times must be fast"
  - dcposch 11y ago
    This is my favorite thing about Go. All language arguments aside, Go coders are usually pragmatic and humble and Go code is usually simple and explicit.
  - deleted 11y ago
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- epalmer 11y ago
  I'm lucky that I develop Java CLI apps that only I need to maintain and one other person. But damn there are days in which I scratch my head and wonder why I have to write so much code to do simple things. But on the other hand my best work has been writing Java apps. I have a love hate relationship with Java. I do have Java apps that runs 24x7, day after day without failure. I think I protest too much.
- iofj 11y ago
  Why would you configure a webserver for a java process ? Just have every process include a webserver. At what address ? Well simple : any free address, then register the address you've started up on in zookeeper. Likewise, contact your dependencies by resolving them on zookeeper (this can be done using DNS if you want minimal changes. Protip: SRV records have both ip and port). Having the webserver is useful for reasons beyond just being independant of the webserver itself, like exporting metrics. Making the logs inspectable. Getting thread dump, inspecting current state, ...
StevePerkins 11y ago
> The mental image of a huge ram sucking IDE with code completion for frameworks is simply incompatible with > what I would consider the ideal creative process for me as programmer. Java has long been my primary professional language, and over the past few years Go has taken on a strong secondary niche at my job. I'm big fan of both, and tend to play Switzerland in arguments between them. That being said, the best Go IDE out there right now is the official Go plugin for IntelliJ... which again, happens to be the best Java IDE out there. If you are doing modern software development in ANY language, then you are probably traveling one of three paths: (1) Using an IDE based on JetBrains or Eclipse. (2) Using a variant of Microsoft Visual Studio, which is about an order of magnitude more bloated than #1. (3) Using a plain text editor, which for a typesafe language is a bit daft.
- iainmerrick 11y ago
  (4) Xcode? There are lots of iOS programmers out there.
  - shopkins 11y ago
    Still in camp #1 (AppCode). As someone who also does development outside of iOS, you couldn't pay me enough to solely use Xcode.
- logicchains 11y ago
  What does the Go plugin for IntelliJ offer that Go plugins for Emacs don't? My setup right now has live error checking (highlights errors as they occur), gofmt on save, safe refactoring via gorename, jump-to-definition, proper autocomplete, and Go Oracle integration, for e.g. finding all callers of a method. Due to being Emacs it also has much better support for Vim keybindings via Evil mode.
  - dlsniper 11y ago
    Debugging, cross-platform, integration with a lot of other languages, and databases, local history, out of the box configuration for everything you've just mention (including the Vim key working mode, via a plugin) so that people don't spend time in doing all of that and so much more :)
jbeja 11y ago
"I don't like Oracle. I don't like the JVM." You could just save yourself some (a bunch) of typing stopping there. All the other reason make you look like a clown.
- hans0l074 11y ago
  Your comment is quite cryptic imho, and there is no need to respond in this fashion. Can you elaborate?
zenlikethat 11y ago
I agree Erlang is probably not the correct fit for the average startup, but for some areas it is essentially unparalleled (and businesses have had great success with it). Consider the online advertising industry, for instance -- in order to guarantee the kind of uptime and debuggability that real-time bidding and decision making on ads requires, Erlang is an excellent choice (cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURhXHbxbDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURhXHbxbDU).
- poooogles 11y ago
  Go is great for RTB as well. Easy concurrency that scales very well. Anecdotally it seems a lot easier to hire for than Erlang/functional languages.
  - davidw 11y ago
    If it's just concurrency and scaling, things are a toss-up. Where Erlang really comes into its own are all the fault tolerant and distributed things that Erlang adds, like the supervision tree.
mayhew 11y ago
Go is such a simple language that I believe any decent developer could be productive with it within a week. I'm not sure the hiring argument is all that great.
curun1r 11y ago
> it would be very hard to persuade me to not choose Java...For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. This is actually the reason I would not choose Java. I started programming Java in the 90s and spent the better part of 2 decades writing code in it. The last 8 years of that time, I was a lead developer, so I've interviewed hundreds of Java developers. The most kind way to describe them, as a whole, is uninspired. If I were more honest, I'd say that the vast majority of Java programmers are completely unqualified. There are very few Java programmers who write code because they have a passion for it and it shows...most just learned Java to make lots of money. On the other hand, if you were to choose a language like Go or Erlang, you'd get less than one tenth of the resumes for your open position, but the majority of those resumes would be highly qualified. The reason is that each of those candidates was motivated to learn a new language solely out of curiosity. You'd be automatically selecting for intellectual curiosity and that's a powerful tool that will save you hours upon hours sifting through Java candidates who are simply a waste of your time. This isn't an indictment of the Java platform...it's no longer my favorite programming target, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it from a technical perspective. It's just a recognition that more != better when it comes to language ecosystem. Quality matters.
- jhh 11y ago
  Do you know this essay http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html? Almost exactly your points.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  I have a similar experience with interviewing Java developers in offshoring projects, and I started to think like that, until I was involved into similar projects done in other languages and came to the conclusion any mass market programming language suffers from the same sins.
serge2k 11y ago
> I refuse to learn Java So you willfully ignorant but will continue to spout off opinions anyway?
- autoreleasepool 11y ago
  I've read a lot about Java. I just don't want to learn it on my free time. My opinions were based off what I read
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serge2k 11y ago
> I refuse to learn Java So you willfully ignorant but will continue to spout off opinions anyway?
d4rkph1b3r 11y ago
>For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. Do you think this large pool of programmers are good? >This makes it very easy to hire Java developers. Yes, if you are looking for sub-par developers. I don't think Google thinks to itself "oh man we're so glad we use java, otherwise hiring would be challenging". No, they have just as much difficultly hiring as anyone else. I'd even say that considering it's the 'blub' language to use PG speak, it makes hiring harder for them. >Java has stability, Java has concurrency, Java has hot reloading, Java has a good track record, Java scales, No, those are things the JVM has. >Java has really nice functional programming support, You can't honestly believe this. How much functional programming experience do you have?
- autoreleasepool 11y ago
  > Do you think this large pool of programmers are good? Yes, why not? I have yet to see evidence that Java programmers are not good. Seems like a discriminatory mindset. The large pool also makes them easy to replace. I think Facebook has had an ad for an Erlang developer for a few months now. I don't think a startup needs that kind of stress. Also, I'm sure there are Java Devi who are absolutely fantastic. That is, I think the idea of the meme "real passionate programmers use less mainstream languages" is entirely unsubstantiated. This line of thinking comes from immaturity, elitism, and a desire for validation by association. It's just like the "the best lawyers were on the debate team" meme that's also very untrue. It sounds nice if your kid is on the debate team, though >No those are the things the JVM has. I meant Java as a platform. Funny, you were the only one who didn't know what it was what I meant here. > You honestly can't believe this. How much functional programming experience do you have? I've dabbled with Erlang and Haskell. I don't have as much functional programming experience as I would like. Also, I've only heard good things about Scala and Clojure. What was so ridiculous to you about what I said? Or are you unable to forgive an accidental conflation of Java and the JVM? Your criticism come across as nothing more than unreasonably pedantic expectations for terminology. They either reflect your inability to use context clues effectively or your lack of common sense. > It's the 'blub' language to us PG speak This is a poor reason to think Java developers are incompetent. I hope this isn't the premise that led you to that inherently false conclusion.
pjmlp 11y ago
>I refuse to learn Java because I personally have a strong bias for native, compiled code. All commercial JVMs support AOT compilation to native code. Yes even some of the Oracle ones, e.g. Java Embedded.
pjmlp 11y ago
> For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. That is real a problem of quality of those CS departments. My humble Portuguese CS department teached me about Pascal, C++, C, Prolog, Caml Light, Smalltalk, Java, Lisp, MIPS and x86 Assembly. Having a quick look at their current curriculum, now around 25 years later, they seem to still provide a good mix.
- autoreleasepool 11y ago
  I have to admit I'm jealous you had such a diverse exposure to programming paradigms. I agree it's a problem. I've always found it odd that the AP test is in Java for example. I would imagine pseudo code would be a better choice for a conceptual test.
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    And I only listed the official ones. Those of us, like myself, that opted into the compiler design classes had a quite a few more to play with. I guess the problem are those universities that tend to be more focused on "languages to get a job" than doing the real work of an university.

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johan_larson 11y ago

For my money, Java is a pretty good language; there are only a couple of things that I think were real mistakes in the core language. And the JVM certainly performs. But the ecosystem around Java is very complex and hard to manage. Dealing with JVM configuration, webserver configuration, build system configuration, IDE configuration and God knows what else takes up all kinds of brain-space. And every so often the community goes off on some crusade. Everything must be Design Patterns. Everything must be specified in XML. Everything must be a Bean. No, everything must be Injection. No, no, everything must be Annotation. The Java culture really needs to learn the value of the simple and explicit.

joelg236 11y ago
> And every so often the community goes off on some crusade. Everything must be Design Patterns. Everything must be specified in XML. Everything must be a Bean. No, everything must be Injection. No, no, everything must be Annotation. You couldn't have described this better for me. This is my exact frustration with the ecosystem, and it's the only thing that keeps me from using Java as my default language of choice. The language itself can be used very well, just wish the tooling was more concise and functional.
stcredzero 11y ago
> culture really needs to learn the value of the simple and explicit. This is true for any programming community.
- paulddraper 11y ago
  "Compile times must be fast"
- dcposch 11y ago
  This is my favorite thing about Go. All language arguments aside, Go coders are usually pragmatic and humble and Go code is usually simple and explicit.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
epalmer 11y ago
I'm lucky that I develop Java CLI apps that only I need to maintain and one other person. But damn there are days in which I scratch my head and wonder why I have to write so much code to do simple things. But on the other hand my best work has been writing Java apps. I have a love hate relationship with Java. I do have Java apps that runs 24x7, day after day without failure. I think I protest too much.
iofj 11y ago
Why would you configure a webserver for a java process ? Just have every process include a webserver. At what address ? Well simple : any free address, then register the address you've started up on in zookeeper. Likewise, contact your dependencies by resolving them on zookeeper (this can be done using DNS if you want minimal changes. Protip: SRV records have both ip and port). Having the webserver is useful for reasons beyond just being independant of the webserver itself, like exporting metrics. Making the logs inspectable. Getting thread dump, inspecting current state, ...

StevePerkins 11y ago

> The mental image of a huge ram sucking IDE with code completion for frameworks is simply incompatible with > what I would consider the ideal creative process for me as programmer. Java has long been my primary professional language, and over the past few years Go has taken on a strong secondary niche at my job. I'm big fan of both, and tend to play Switzerland in arguments between them. That being said, the best Go IDE out there right now is the official Go plugin for IntelliJ... which again, happens to be the best Java IDE out there. If you are doing modern software development in ANY language, then you are probably traveling one of three paths: (1) Using an IDE based on JetBrains or Eclipse. (2) Using a variant of Microsoft Visual Studio, which is about an order of magnitude more bloated than #1. (3) Using a plain text editor, which for a typesafe language is a bit daft.

iainmerrick 11y ago
(4) Xcode? There are lots of iOS programmers out there.
- shopkins 11y ago
  Still in camp #1 (AppCode). As someone who also does development outside of iOS, you couldn't pay me enough to solely use Xcode.
logicchains 11y ago
What does the Go plugin for IntelliJ offer that Go plugins for Emacs don't? My setup right now has live error checking (highlights errors as they occur), gofmt on save, safe refactoring via gorename, jump-to-definition, proper autocomplete, and Go Oracle integration, for e.g. finding all callers of a method. Due to being Emacs it also has much better support for Vim keybindings via Evil mode.
- dlsniper 11y ago
  Debugging, cross-platform, integration with a lot of other languages, and databases, local history, out of the box configuration for everything you've just mention (including the Vim key working mode, via a plugin) so that people don't spend time in doing all of that and so much more :)

jbeja 11y ago

"I don't like Oracle. I don't like the JVM." You could just save yourself some (a bunch) of typing stopping there. All the other reason make you look like a clown.

hans0l074 11y ago
Your comment is quite cryptic imho, and there is no need to respond in this fashion. Can you elaborate?

zenlikethat 11y ago

I agree Erlang is probably not the correct fit for the average startup, but for some areas it is essentially unparalleled (and businesses have had great success with it). Consider the online advertising industry, for instance -- in order to guarantee the kind of uptime and debuggability that real-time bidding and decision making on ads requires, Erlang is an excellent choice (cf. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURhXHbxbDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURhXHbxbDU).

poooogles 11y ago
Go is great for RTB as well. Easy concurrency that scales very well. Anecdotally it seems a lot easier to hire for than Erlang/functional languages.
- davidw 11y ago
  If it's just concurrency and scaling, things are a toss-up. Where Erlang really comes into its own are all the fault tolerant and distributed things that Erlang adds, like the supervision tree.

mayhew 11y ago

Go is such a simple language that I believe any decent developer could be productive with it within a week. I'm not sure the hiring argument is all that great.

curun1r 11y ago

> it would be very hard to persuade me to not choose Java...For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. This is actually the reason I would not choose Java. I started programming Java in the 90s and spent the better part of 2 decades writing code in it. The last 8 years of that time, I was a lead developer, so I've interviewed hundreds of Java developers. The most kind way to describe them, as a whole, is uninspired. If I were more honest, I'd say that the vast majority of Java programmers are completely unqualified. There are very few Java programmers who write code because they have a passion for it and it shows...most just learned Java to make lots of money. On the other hand, if you were to choose a language like Go or Erlang, you'd get less than one tenth of the resumes for your open position, but the majority of those resumes would be highly qualified. The reason is that each of those candidates was motivated to learn a new language solely out of curiosity. You'd be automatically selecting for intellectual curiosity and that's a powerful tool that will save you hours upon hours sifting through Java candidates who are simply a waste of your time. This isn't an indictment of the Java platform...it's no longer my favorite programming target, but there's nothing fundamentally wrong with it from a technical perspective. It's just a recognition that more != better when it comes to language ecosystem. Quality matters.

jhh 11y ago
Do you know this essay http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html http://paulgraham.com/pypar.html? Almost exactly your points.
pjmlp 11y ago
I have a similar experience with interviewing Java developers in offshoring projects, and I started to think like that, until I was involved into similar projects done in other languages and came to the conclusion any mass market programming language suffers from the same sins.

serge2k 11y ago

> I refuse to learn Java So you willfully ignorant but will continue to spout off opinions anyway?

autoreleasepool 11y ago
I've read a lot about Java. I just don't want to learn it on my free time. My opinions were based off what I read
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deleted 11y ago
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serge2k 11y ago

> I refuse to learn Java So you willfully ignorant but will continue to spout off opinions anyway?

d4rkph1b3r 11y ago

>For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. Do you think this large pool of programmers are good? >This makes it very easy to hire Java developers. Yes, if you are looking for sub-par developers. I don't think Google thinks to itself "oh man we're so glad we use java, otherwise hiring would be challenging". No, they have just as much difficultly hiring as anyone else. I'd even say that considering it's the 'blub' language to use PG speak, it makes hiring harder for them. >Java has stability, Java has concurrency, Java has hot reloading, Java has a good track record, Java scales, No, those are things the JVM has. >Java has really nice functional programming support, You can't honestly believe this. How much functional programming experience do you have?

autoreleasepool 11y ago
> Do you think this large pool of programmers are good? Yes, why not? I have yet to see evidence that Java programmers are not good. Seems like a discriminatory mindset. The large pool also makes them easy to replace. I think Facebook has had an ad for an Erlang developer for a few months now. I don't think a startup needs that kind of stress. Also, I'm sure there are Java Devi who are absolutely fantastic. That is, I think the idea of the meme "real passionate programmers use less mainstream languages" is entirely unsubstantiated. This line of thinking comes from immaturity, elitism, and a desire for validation by association. It's just like the "the best lawyers were on the debate team" meme that's also very untrue. It sounds nice if your kid is on the debate team, though >No those are the things the JVM has. I meant Java as a platform. Funny, you were the only one who didn't know what it was what I meant here. > You honestly can't believe this. How much functional programming experience do you have? I've dabbled with Erlang and Haskell. I don't have as much functional programming experience as I would like. Also, I've only heard good things about Scala and Clojure. What was so ridiculous to you about what I said? Or are you unable to forgive an accidental conflation of Java and the JVM? Your criticism come across as nothing more than unreasonably pedantic expectations for terminology. They either reflect your inability to use context clues effectively or your lack of common sense. > It's the 'blub' language to us PG speak This is a poor reason to think Java developers are incompetent. I hope this isn't the premise that led you to that inherently false conclusion.

pjmlp 11y ago

>I refuse to learn Java because I personally have a strong bias for native, compiled code. All commercial JVMs support AOT compilation to native code. Yes even some of the Oracle ones, e.g. Java Embedded.

pjmlp 11y ago

> For better or worse, CS departments across the US produce Java programmers more than anything else. That is real a problem of quality of those CS departments. My humble Portuguese CS department teached me about Pascal, C++, C, Prolog, Caml Light, Smalltalk, Java, Lisp, MIPS and x86 Assembly. Having a quick look at their current curriculum, now around 25 years later, they seem to still provide a good mix.

autoreleasepool 11y ago
I have to admit I'm jealous you had such a diverse exposure to programming paradigms. I agree it's a problem. I've always found it odd that the AP test is in Java for example. I would imagine pseudo code would be a better choice for a conceptual test.
- pjmlp 11y ago
  And I only listed the official ones. Those of us, like myself, that opted into the compiler design classes had a quite a few more to play with. I guess the problem are those universities that tend to be more focused on "languages to get a job" than doing the real work of an university.