5 ms·

Exactly; I guess a lot of people just work on projects/jobs and then move on. Once you need to go back to systems you forgot about (things you wrote 5-10-15-20+

Exactly; I guess a lot of people just work on projects/jobs and then move on. Once you need to go back to systems you forgot about (things you wrote 5-10-15-20+ years ago), Ruby (in your example and indeed my experience) is a nightmare on speed. The (strange to me) idea that people have that their code won't be around that long, hits me in the face every time a client asks me to 'connect to something made by someone some time ago'; I go check it and it's almost always something php/RoR/(and lately node) built by someone that left years ago and no-one touched it since because it works. When you actually do touch it, ofcourse, it is completely out of date, nothing current works and because of the flexibility of these languages and systems things change way too fast (really unneeded API breaks in packages is something crazy to me; coming from Java, I expect people to keep things backward compatible, but nope; just toss it out!) (especially node npm and least of all PHP which is actually a joy to work with in this kind of spelonking as it is remarkably stable including it's (older) libraries) (and no, not everyone uses a framework with php 'nowadays'; I run into many PHP projects a few years old that are just plain php, more so than frameworks used and that actually does make it easier to jump as plain php still works from a decade ago after update). And then when you have it running on your laptop, it usually is full of these 'corner cases' (lazy programmer input/output handling I would call it) which don't age well (and often hides bugs). On the other hand, running into Java or C# projects is hardly ever an issue; it's a lot of boiler plate (many (request/response/dto etc) models/entities and layers), but it's readable immediately and if it still runs, it means that all data is validated and I can trust it.

The_rationalist 6y ago
The dilemma: boilerplate vs dynamic languages is a thing of the past. Kotlin make code even clearer than in java while being the sexiest syntax out there. It's 100% compatible with your Java code so you can incrementally migrate starting now!
- zaphar 6y ago
  The dilemma was always a false choice. You don't need kotlin to get rid of your boilerplate. Java is just a capable of being concise as any other language. Java's verbosity is a cultural artifact not a technical one.
  - ed25519FUUU 6y ago
    Don’t get me wrong. I use java every day and quite enjoy it, but when I compare it to writing in Go or Kotlin, java does sometimes feel a little like meta programming. Especially if it’s a spring app, which is quite common.
    - eitland 6y ago
      This is obviously a matter of taste but I enjoy Java more when I stay away from Spring.
  - The_rationalist 6y ago
    No it is not as capable. The cultural verbosity is only a subset of the verbosity in java. The cultural one is great as those long API names allows for standardized and maximal clarity. The one induced by language syntax is accidental. https://www.mediaan.com/mediaan-blog/kotlin-vs-java https://www.mediaan.com/mediaan-blog/kotlin-vs-java Things like state of the art type inference, data classes and lambda syntax, no semi colon and ton of other things allow for reduced syntactic noise.
  - mumblemumble 6y ago
    So, technically, you can get rid of a lot of the more egregious clutter with things like Project Lombok. But I'd argue that, if you need to lean on compiler plugins to do it, it's sort of a rhetorical Pyrrhic victory.
    - pjmlp 6y ago
      And I would argue that adopting guest languages, alongside the extra complexity that they bring on board regarding extra IDE plugins, more layers to debug (has to pretend to be Java to the JVM), FFI issues (calling coroutines from Java), and creating their own library eco-system is not worth the trouble, beyond some short term feel good. As long as the platform exists, its main language is the one holding the keys.
  - runawaybottle 6y ago
    Can you describe this a little more. How did the verbosity enter the culture?
- pjmlp 6y ago
  Kotlin has sealed its fate turning into Android's main language. On the JVM its novelty will fade out while Java adopts whatever features might be relevant to the millions of Java developers out there, just like it happened with all other that came before. And I remember the days back when Groovy was supposed to be the scripting language for JEE, and Spring was going full speed with it as Java alternative, and we even got strongly typed variant.

The_rationalist 6y ago

The dilemma: boilerplate vs dynamic languages is a thing of the past. Kotlin make code even clearer than in java while being the sexiest syntax out there. It's 100% compatible with your Java code so you can incrementally migrate starting now!

zaphar 6y ago
The dilemma was always a false choice. You don't need kotlin to get rid of your boilerplate. Java is just a capable of being concise as any other language. Java's verbosity is a cultural artifact not a technical one.
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Don’t get me wrong. I use java every day and quite enjoy it, but when I compare it to writing in Go or Kotlin, java does sometimes feel a little like meta programming. Especially if it’s a spring app, which is quite common.
  - eitland 6y ago
    This is obviously a matter of taste but I enjoy Java more when I stay away from Spring.
- The_rationalist 6y ago
  No it is not as capable. The cultural verbosity is only a subset of the verbosity in java. The cultural one is great as those long API names allows for standardized and maximal clarity. The one induced by language syntax is accidental. https://www.mediaan.com/mediaan-blog/kotlin-vs-java https://www.mediaan.com/mediaan-blog/kotlin-vs-java Things like state of the art type inference, data classes and lambda syntax, no semi colon and ton of other things allow for reduced syntactic noise.
- mumblemumble 6y ago
  So, technically, you can get rid of a lot of the more egregious clutter with things like Project Lombok. But I'd argue that, if you need to lean on compiler plugins to do it, it's sort of a rhetorical Pyrrhic victory.
  - pjmlp 6y ago
    And I would argue that adopting guest languages, alongside the extra complexity that they bring on board regarding extra IDE plugins, more layers to debug (has to pretend to be Java to the JVM), FFI issues (calling coroutines from Java), and creating their own library eco-system is not worth the trouble, beyond some short term feel good. As long as the platform exists, its main language is the one holding the keys.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Can you describe this a little more. How did the verbosity enter the culture?
pjmlp 6y ago
Kotlin has sealed its fate turning into Android's main language. On the JVM its novelty will fade out while Java adopts whatever features might be relevant to the millions of Java developers out there, just like it happened with all other that came before. And I remember the days back when Groovy was supposed to be the scripting language for JEE, and Spring was going full speed with it as Java alternative, and we even got strongly typed variant.