3 ms·

Why is it that every Java application I've encountered in my 20 years of corporate IT, has been a performance pig? Is it just a case of bad developers, making s

Why is it that every Java application I've encountered in my 20 years of corporate IT, has been a performance pig? Is it just a case of bad developers, making shit code? Is it difficult to make Java perform well, but when it does, it shines? I can't have accidentally interacted with ONLY the crappiest Java apps in my tenure.

geodel 7y ago
I have exactly similar experience. At this point I feel Java programmer/developer is misnomer. Most of the time they are 'framework' fiddlers. Be it J2EE, Spring, Spring Boot (nowadays) Vert.x and so on. When I talk about an http server, the only frame of reference in their mind is Weblogic, Websphere, JBoss, Tomcat etc. The stuff they work with is 80% auto generated and they are quite proud if it. So few application I own have about 200 LOC of business logic and 10K LOC Spring Boot fluff along with some 60 jar files which I am not sure what they really do.
asdfman123 7y ago
It's possible to make bloated crap in any language. But enterprise programmers making internal software have little incentive to make their programs sleek and fast because they 1) have a captive user base who are forced to use their bad UIs, and 2) there aren't many users so you don't really need to optimize for minimal server use. From the eyes of management, a good enterprise programmer can take a request from start to beginning and fulfill a business requirement in a reasonable amount of time. Architecture, UI, future maintainability, speed, security... that's not really on their radar at all. There are plenty of managers who do not understand or respect feature creep and technical debt, so spending time refactoring is useless and opaque to them. Developers have no incentive to write good code, and bad developers who can talk a good game get hired on, so the codebase spirals into an unmaintainable sea of crap. According to management, if you solve business problems, you're valuable to them. So if you care about good code, it's an uphill battle fighting for it against the other entrenched developers who really don't give a shit. These programs usually happen to be written in Java because there are tons of Java developers out there, which is great if you don't live in a tech hub.
- overcast 7y ago
  This isn't even internal stuff, all paid commercial applications. Oracle is notorious for it, but most recently dealing with SysAid(Helpdesk software).

geodel 7y ago

I have exactly similar experience. At this point I feel Java programmer/developer is misnomer. Most of the time they are 'framework' fiddlers. Be it J2EE, Spring, Spring Boot (nowadays) Vert.x and so on. When I talk about an http server, the only frame of reference in their mind is Weblogic, Websphere, JBoss, Tomcat etc. The stuff they work with is 80% auto generated and they are quite proud if it. So few application I own have about 200 LOC of business logic and 10K LOC Spring Boot fluff along with some 60 jar files which I am not sure what they really do.

asdfman123 7y ago

It's possible to make bloated crap in any language. But enterprise programmers making internal software have little incentive to make their programs sleek and fast because they 1) have a captive user base who are forced to use their bad UIs, and 2) there aren't many users so you don't really need to optimize for minimal server use. From the eyes of management, a good enterprise programmer can take a request from start to beginning and fulfill a business requirement in a reasonable amount of time. Architecture, UI, future maintainability, speed, security... that's not really on their radar at all. There are plenty of managers who do not understand or respect feature creep and technical debt, so spending time refactoring is useless and opaque to them. Developers have no incentive to write good code, and bad developers who can talk a good game get hired on, so the codebase spirals into an unmaintainable sea of crap. According to management, if you solve business problems, you're valuable to them. So if you care about good code, it's an uphill battle fighting for it against the other entrenched developers who really don't give a shit. These programs usually happen to be written in Java because there are tons of Java developers out there, which is great if you don't live in a tech hub.

overcast 7y ago
This isn't even internal stuff, all paid commercial applications. Oracle is notorious for it, but most recently dealing with SysAid(Helpdesk software).