4 ms·

I wish comparisons to Java would use Lombok. I'm never going to actually write something that verbose in Java.

mahmoudimus 9y ago
Pitfalls of Lombok aside, I agree that it is indispensable to reduce the amount of boilerplate in Java. That being said, it is largely a hack but most of the IDEs have Lombok support so it's not _as_ bad.
- al452 9y ago
  AutoValue beats Lombok hands down. Not least because it is pure Java so no extra IDE support is needed.
minus7 9y ago
Lombok addresses one pain point of Java (constructors/getters/setters), Kotlin addresses more. Lombok also does a bit of magic, so should be used with care. E.g. @AllArgsConstructor is a dangerous one if you change the order of fields, especially if you don't have IDE support for Lombok.
- depsypher 9y ago
  Not sure where the danger is with @AllArgsConstructor. If you change the order of fields, it's the same as if you changed the order of the constructor parameters. You'll get compile errors and be forced to fix them (IDE or not). Seems as safe as anything to me.
  - joneholland 9y ago
    That assumes your constructor parameters are all unique types.
    - mseebach 9y ago
      I would consider that a bit of a design smell, but yes. I think the danger point has more to do with training new converts: it is very unusual in any language that changing the order of class internals can change its external behavior.
stickfigure 9y ago
I was going to write something similar. My takeaway from the article is that Kotlin is perhaps a very minor improvement over Java + Lombok + some functional libraries like Vavr. This is actually my biggest complaint about Kotlin; it doesn't bring much to the table that is very new. If I'm going to move on from Java I want something more exciting like Ceylon's union & intersection types (which I get to use in... Typescript).
- hasenj 9y ago
  There's rarely a need for a language with anything "new". There's a strong need for a language that brings the best ideas recently developed and puts them together in a new language that does not have baggage from the past, (e.g. D). I've never used Lombok or any other code generator with Java. I think the important features of Kotlin are: - Null checking - Proper lambda/function types - Not everything has to be a class - You can specify parameter name when passing to functions: specially useful when constructing objects. - Simplified constructors (member fields can be specified in the argument list). These were some of my biggest pet peeves with Java. That, and the weird stream APIs.
- s4vi0r 9y ago
  As a non-Java dev, Lombok seems like the kind of thing that could only be tolerated by Stockholm syndrome java devs :/ I mean, it's a clever solution and the site/documentation is great. But tossing around annotations everywhere feels hacky as hell, not to mention that it only works with IDEs. I'm sure the combination you mentioned approaches Kotlin in terms of features and QoL improvements, but it's just so much nicer to have these things built into the language. Plus, Lombok is mostly constrained to boilerplate reduction - Kotlin may not be as "crazy" as Scala, but it still has some really nice modern features that java doesn't have/can't have/won't have for a long time.
  - mschulze 9y ago
    > ...not to mention that it only works with IDEs. That's not true. Lombok is an annotation preprocessor. That means it is running with javac which is independent of any build tools or IDEs. As long as it is on the classpath when compiling (-cp flag of javac) it works. Of course for code completion you need an editor that is aware of Lombok / uses the compiled bytecode for that.
lmm 9y ago
Using Lombok is just as much effort as adopting another JVM language (you still have to teach all your tools about Lombok, adapt all your processes, teach anyone you hire...), for a smaller reward, IME. (I used to use Lombok, the checkers framework, and various other pieces. I found Scala gave me all of that and more, for a similar level of effort)

Pitfalls of Lombok aside, I agree that it is indispensable to reduce the amount of boilerplate in Java. That being said, it is largely a hack but most of the IDEs have Lombok support so it's not _as_ bad.

al452 9y ago
AutoValue beats Lombok hands down. Not least because it is pure Java so no extra IDE support is needed.

minus7 9y ago

Lombok addresses one pain point of Java (constructors/getters/setters), Kotlin addresses more. Lombok also does a bit of magic, so should be used with care. E.g. @AllArgsConstructor is a dangerous one if you change the order of fields, especially if you don't have IDE support for Lombok.

depsypher 9y ago
Not sure where the danger is with @AllArgsConstructor. If you change the order of fields, it's the same as if you changed the order of the constructor parameters. You'll get compile errors and be forced to fix them (IDE or not). Seems as safe as anything to me.
- joneholland 9y ago
  That assumes your constructor parameters are all unique types.
  - mseebach 9y ago
    I would consider that a bit of a design smell, but yes. I think the danger point has more to do with training new converts: it is very unusual in any language that changing the order of class internals can change its external behavior.

stickfigure 9y ago

I was going to write something similar. My takeaway from the article is that Kotlin is perhaps a very minor improvement over Java + Lombok + some functional libraries like Vavr. This is actually my biggest complaint about Kotlin; it doesn't bring much to the table that is very new. If I'm going to move on from Java I want something more exciting like Ceylon's union & intersection types (which I get to use in... Typescript).

hasenj 9y ago
There's rarely a need for a language with anything "new". There's a strong need for a language that brings the best ideas recently developed and puts them together in a new language that does not have baggage from the past, (e.g. D). I've never used Lombok or any other code generator with Java. I think the important features of Kotlin are: - Null checking - Proper lambda/function types - Not everything has to be a class - You can specify parameter name when passing to functions: specially useful when constructing objects. - Simplified constructors (member fields can be specified in the argument list). These were some of my biggest pet peeves with Java. That, and the weird stream APIs.
s4vi0r 9y ago
As a non-Java dev, Lombok seems like the kind of thing that could only be tolerated by Stockholm syndrome java devs :/ I mean, it's a clever solution and the site/documentation is great. But tossing around annotations everywhere feels hacky as hell, not to mention that it only works with IDEs. I'm sure the combination you mentioned approaches Kotlin in terms of features and QoL improvements, but it's just so much nicer to have these things built into the language. Plus, Lombok is mostly constrained to boilerplate reduction - Kotlin may not be as "crazy" as Scala, but it still has some really nice modern features that java doesn't have/can't have/won't have for a long time.
- mschulze 9y ago
  > ...not to mention that it only works with IDEs. That's not true. Lombok is an annotation preprocessor. That means it is running with javac which is independent of any build tools or IDEs. As long as it is on the classpath when compiling (-cp flag of javac) it works. Of course for code completion you need an editor that is aware of Lombok / uses the compiled bytecode for that.

lmm 9y ago

Using Lombok is just as much effort as adopting another JVM language (you still have to teach all your tools about Lombok, adapt all your processes, teach anyone you hire...), for a smaller reward, IME. (I used to use Lombok, the checkers framework, and various other pieces. I found Scala gave me all of that and more, for a similar level of effort)