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"Why are so many people using Java (perhaps even more than C and C++ combined)?" Well, one contributing factor is that a lot of universities now have a heavily

by Spyro7 15y ago

"Why are so many people using Java (perhaps even more than C and C++ combined)?" Well, one contributing factor is that a lot of universities now have a heavily Java based curriculum (turning their CS programs into vocational schools, but I digress). Another contributing factor is that Java has managed to carve itself a niche in which it is used extensively ("enterprise" applications - with all of the wonderful ambiguity that the word "enterprise" carries nowadays). One more thing in Java's favor is just simple momentum. There are a lot of Java libraries that just plain work (and some work extremely well). There are a lot of applications on the corporate side that use Java. Regardless of whether you or I like the language or not, Java has apparently proven itself useful to a broad swathe of people. It may not be an exciting language, but then neither is Cobol and it still exists as well (and puts food on quite a few tables). Then there is the venerable JVM, which is actually an amazing piece of software engineering that has enabled the development of a wave of innovative new languages. Of course, one of the features of many of these new languages is the ability to drop down into Java for speed (now before anyone starts sneering, Java is actually not doing to bad on that front right now). "Does it make a good language? Absolutely not." Perhaps not in your opinion, but their are others who are quite fond of it. That's the problem with these type of pronouncements. What makes a "good language" varies from person to person. Disclaimer: I have used Java for some small projects in the past - I may be somewhat biased. Edit: Embarrassing grammatical flaws.

mojuba 15y ago
I know Java is practical within certain contexts and for certain class of people, but our judgement of what's good or bad in general shouldn't really be a matter of taste and preference. Are we an engineering discipline or what? What we call a matter of preference is actually things that go beyond engineering. We may have emotional ties to programming languages ("I love Java", "I hate C++") because of job security, because of often subconscious fear of inability to learn new stuff, and so on. We should clean up the table from the psychological aspects of the matter and look at what's left: that's how powerful and how clever a language can be in the hands of a good developer. Java is a terribly verbose and an embarrassingly simplistic language. C is simplistic and can be considered dead the day C++ compilers catch up with speed and memory allocation, which will make it suitable for embedded programming too. (And BTW, I don't mind JVM, it probably is a fantastic piece of engineering, except... for reasons I don't understand very well, a simple "Hello world" application written for JVM can take seconds to load and execute. I've heard a thousands reasons none of which made much sense. As well as promises JVM will be improved in the future. First time I heard this was 15 years ago, still no progress.)
- Spyro7 15y ago
  "our judgement of what's good or bad in general shouldn't really be a matter of taste and preference. Are we an engineering discipline or what?" You know what. It's a funny thing, but as I was typing my response to your original post, I actually said this exact same thing to myself, and I started to think. It would be incredible if there was some non-emotional, non-touchy-feely way to get at the value of one language vs another. But then programming language choice just seems to be an inherently "feel" based decision... "We should clean up the table from the psychological aspects of the matter and look at what's left: that's how powerful and how clever a language can be in the hands of a good developer." This is one of the things that I thought of, but then there are so many demonstrations of people using all kinds of programming languages to do things that are incredibly clever and powerful. Sometimes I like to just go through open source projects written in programming languages I am not extremely familiar with. I just want to get a taste of some of the myriad of programming styles and techniques that are out there. The different ways of looking at the same problem. Even if I disagree with the method used, it is always eye-opening to see other ways of doing things - even some that may be vastly different from anything that I have ever seen before (my first time looking at Haskell comes to mind). I like to understand how and why different developers choose the routes that they choose. I don't know, but to me it seems that, in a way, it is good that there is no emotionless method for rating languages. To declare one language as being definitively better than all others seems to me that it would be a tremendous loss. There is some value, I think, in having a diversity of "good" languages just for its own sake. As to the simplicity of a language, well, to some people simplicity in a programming language is a beautiful thing, but then, the problem is that what constitutes simple is also a thing that varies from developer to developer. Perhaps the diversity of languages is a natural development from the diversity of programmers? I think about Ruby. You know, when Matz describes why he created the language, he says that he wanted to create something that felt fun to develop in - fun for him. The fact that other people just happened to like Ruby was an unintended side effect. I think that most people create a programming language with a similar type of outlook. They, either purposefully or subconsciously, try to build it to achieve a certain "feel". Perhaps it is this "feel" that makes a good developer powerful and clever with a language. "for reasons I don't understand very well, a simple \"Hello world\" application written for JVM can take seconds to load and execute." Heh heh, I have no comments on that.

by Spyro7 15y ago

mojuba 15y ago

I know Java is practical within certain contexts and for certain class of people, but our judgement of what's good or bad in general shouldn't really be a matter of taste and preference. Are we an engineering discipline or what? What we call a matter of preference is actually things that go beyond engineering. We may have emotional ties to programming languages ("I love Java", "I hate C++") because of job security, because of often subconscious fear of inability to learn new stuff, and so on. We should clean up the table from the psychological aspects of the matter and look at what's left: that's how powerful and how clever a language can be in the hands of a good developer. Java is a terribly verbose and an embarrassingly simplistic language. C is simplistic and can be considered dead the day C++ compilers catch up with speed and memory allocation, which will make it suitable for embedded programming too. (And BTW, I don't mind JVM, it probably is a fantastic piece of engineering, except... for reasons I don't understand very well, a simple "Hello world" application written for JVM can take seconds to load and execute. I've heard a thousands reasons none of which made much sense. As well as promises JVM will be improved in the future. First time I heard this was 15 years ago, still no progress.)

Spyro7 15y ago
"our judgement of what's good or bad in general shouldn't really be a matter of taste and preference. Are we an engineering discipline or what?" You know what. It's a funny thing, but as I was typing my response to your original post, I actually said this exact same thing to myself, and I started to think. It would be incredible if there was some non-emotional, non-touchy-feely way to get at the value of one language vs another. But then programming language choice just seems to be an inherently "feel" based decision... "We should clean up the table from the psychological aspects of the matter and look at what's left: that's how powerful and how clever a language can be in the hands of a good developer." This is one of the things that I thought of, but then there are so many demonstrations of people using all kinds of programming languages to do things that are incredibly clever and powerful. Sometimes I like to just go through open source projects written in programming languages I am not extremely familiar with. I just want to get a taste of some of the myriad of programming styles and techniques that are out there. The different ways of looking at the same problem. Even if I disagree with the method used, it is always eye-opening to see other ways of doing things - even some that may be vastly different from anything that I have ever seen before (my first time looking at Haskell comes to mind). I like to understand how and why different developers choose the routes that they choose. I don't know, but to me it seems that, in a way, it is good that there is no emotionless method for rating languages. To declare one language as being definitively better than all others seems to me that it would be a tremendous loss. There is some value, I think, in having a diversity of "good" languages just for its own sake. As to the simplicity of a language, well, to some people simplicity in a programming language is a beautiful thing, but then, the problem is that what constitutes simple is also a thing that varies from developer to developer. Perhaps the diversity of languages is a natural development from the diversity of programmers? I think about Ruby. You know, when Matz describes why he created the language, he says that he wanted to create something that felt fun to develop in - fun for him. The fact that other people just happened to like Ruby was an unintended side effect. I think that most people create a programming language with a similar type of outlook. They, either purposefully or subconsciously, try to build it to achieve a certain "feel". Perhaps it is this "feel" that makes a good developer powerful and clever with a language. "for reasons I don't understand very well, a simple \"Hello world\" application written for JVM can take seconds to load and execute." Heh heh, I have no comments on that.