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pg wrote a bunch of really good essays about Java vs Python vs Lisp and how those were perceived by programmers. I always remember them when I see Go being comp
by meruru 7y ago
pg wrote a bunch of really good essays about Java vs Python vs Lisp and how those were perceived by programmers. I always remember them when I see Go being compared to Java while still being liked by Hackers. I wonder what he would write about this phenomenon.
- parasubvert 7y agopg has a blind spot wrt Java. Lots of hackers liked (and still like) Java ecosystem (see Kotlin for more recent fun). like lisp hackers, they hung out on their own and didn't mingle.
- meddlepal 7y agoThis, but also I suspect a lot of people that claim to dislike Java are tainted by it's framework heavy ecosystem especially early-mid 2000s. The language itself is fairly clean and very pragmatic.
- meruru 7y agoFWIW the essays I mentioned are from the early 2000s. Java's Cover is from 2001: http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html
- parasubvert 7y agoThat essay has proven to be astonishingly wrong. It’s 18 years later and I suspect he’d say the same things about Golang.
- parasubvert 7y agoPossibly, though Java these days is largely “Spring”.
- meruru 7y agoThose essays were written a long time ago and reflected the situation at the time. I can't really say how accurate they were, but you're using the present tense and mentioning present technology, so I thought it would be worth to emphasize that.
- KirinDave 7y agoDisclosure: I am not very impressed by Paul Graham as a programmer. However I think he came by his dislike honestly. When he was actively working, Java was really quite frustrating.
- parasubvert 7y agoI have no doubt. I was one of the pro-Java people in 2001 (dating back to 1996). Language religious wars were really strong in those days, like there could only be one true language, everything else was a toy. The Java backers and community fought against that too aggressively relative to their own limitations. Today each language ecosystem is much more self sustaining and has its own bizarre culture that looks frustrating to outsiders.
- erik_seaberg 7y agoJava without generics and lambdas was terrible. Yegge's https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdom-of-nouns.html https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/03/execution-in-kingdo... was spot on because the only way to pass an expression or a block of statements was to wrap it in an object and give it to something that knows which method to call.
- parasubvert 7y agoJava’s success was built in those days though. Personally I liked the language just fine without those features, Java generics in particular make code a lot less readable IMO. This is partly why I like Golang so much, they’ve been focusing on readability. I will agree that Lambdas are better than anonymous inner classes.
- checktheorder 7y ago>This is partly why I like Golang so much, they’ve been focusing on readability. Speaking as someone who's just returned to coding after a two-decade absence (mostly for fun), this is the #1 thing I love about Golang. I can actually read code from very experienced and skilled developers and understand what they'd written. And yet the language itself is highly capable - I don't feel like I'm learning some "beginner" language, but a "real" one that I can use for practical purposes.