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> More seriously, what are you missing in Go that is well-done in Java? 1. Generics. And yea, I know Go is getting generics "Real Soon Now" (tm), but it is inc

> More seriously, what are you missing in Go that is well-done in Java? 1. Generics. And yea, I know Go is getting generics "Real Soon Now" (tm), but it is incredibly annoying to write the same collection code over and over and there's some third-party libs that would really benefit from generics (looking at you Azure Go SDK). 2. Error handling... with the big caveat that I actually like Go's error handling mechanism at small scale but wish there was a good way to chain several operations together and return an error to the top if any failed... I find myself writing a lot of `err != nil` checks in sequence and I've found baking my own abstractions around this to be leaky or difficult to grow as the program requirements change. 3. Diverse collections API. 4. Iterators. 5. Not Java-the-language but the JVM has amazing monitoring tools. > I assume verbosity of the code is still the defining characteristic of Java? Pound for pound... I think Go and Java have about the same verbosity. I'm honestly never quite sure what people mean by "verbosity" in Java. Generally I interpret this as "frameworks" but I predicated my OP on the idea that legacy framework bloat is where most of people's frustration with Java lies... not the language itself.

avmich 6y ago
> I'm honestly never quite sure what people mean by "verbosity" in Java. Java improved with "var" keyword (use with caution!) and introduction of records. These are not the only code-shortening features (there are e.g. interface methods, diamond operator, lambdas, convenience "of(...)" methods, even "fluid style"), but they, used well, can really reduce verbosity.
- bobthepanda 6y ago
  Also, a lot of verbosity in Java came from people going off the rails with design patterns to hide crap multiple levels deep in a file with 5+ words in the class name. If you have a hammer everything’s a nail.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Frameworks like Spring/Spring Boot kind of force that as well with their runtime creation of proxy classes.
- Scarbutt 6y ago
  I'm surprised you didn't mention the Streams API.
ragnese 6y ago
I agree with your points here, but just want to add that, while Java's generics are better than the non-existent generics in Go, I still find Java's type system to be really subpar for today's era. The type system is not strong or expressive enough to do full type erasure, but then we're stuck with type-erased generics, so it's just incredibly frustrating.
twh270 6y ago
Much of the verbosity came from the false presumption that every field in every class needs a public getter and setter. (I cannot express in words how terrible this is.) Some can come from the framework, mostly poorly-designed ones. I think Java 11 and higher are reasonably terse/expressive without being overly dense.
- DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
  Remind me, why doesn’t Java have object-properties yet? So far the only reason I’ve concluded is Java’s language designers’ egos were so damaged by C#, Swift, Kotlin, TypeScript, etc that after dogmatically denying the developer-productivity benefits of properties for the past 20 years that to concede now would mark the end of Java as a language entirely. ...I kid, but seriously I haven’t heard any compelling argument from the Java camp yet for refusing to add this feature. Object-properties are easily the lowest-hanging-fruit with the biggest productivity-gains. Heck, even some of the most popular C++ compilers support object-properties as proprietary extensions.
  - zmmmmm 6y ago
    It's so crazy - with all the huge and radical features they've added this would surely have been so simple by comparison and yet added more value than about 80% of the things they've done. It's about half the reason I still use Groovy now since Java has solved most of the rest over time. But I just cannot go back to writing getters and setters!
  - kaba0 6y ago
    I believe the Java lang team simply dislikes the Java Beans convention, and if they see a better future, they rather not maintain properties forever. I think the current future view is Withers ( https://github.com/openjdk/amber-docs/blob/master/eg-drafts/reconstruction-records-and-classes.md https://github.com/openjdk/amber-docs/blob/master/eg-drafts/... ).
- doctor_eval 6y ago
  Couldn’t agree more, the madness of idiomatically adding setters and getters to every field was something I ended up putting an end to in my last gig, and my life improved immeasurably as a result.
hibbelig 6y ago
About verbosity: you needed to define classes for so many things. Eg you want others to hook into processing in certain places. So you create a listener interface with some methods. And the provider needed to work with those, and the consumer also needs to work with them. In modern Java maybe you can make do with functional interfaces and lambda, but it doesn’t always work I think. And in emacs: the provider does run-hooks, and the consumer defines a function and says add-hook. Done. Very little ceremony.
kerblang 6y ago
Sorry that I find it necessary for yet another answer to your verbosity question, but: The real verbosity is in the standard libraries. What would be a one-liner in any other language is usually at least 2, often 3, and sometimes enough that you end up writing your own wrapper function or library. Especially noticeable is the agony of Lists & Maps, which are first-class citizens in most languages (classic job interview question: what is the difference between ArrayList and LinkedList? Real answer: Nobody actually uses LinkedList). The stdlib often seems to be written by people who had no intention of using it. I guess maybe this applies to C++ as well, so for some folks it seems normal.
- kaba0 6y ago
  There is List.of() and Map.of() now. And I would say, Java has one of the better standard libs out there in my opinion.

avmich 6y ago

> I'm honestly never quite sure what people mean by "verbosity" in Java. Java improved with "var" keyword (use with caution!) and introduction of records. These are not the only code-shortening features (there are e.g. interface methods, diamond operator, lambdas, convenience "of(...)" methods, even "fluid style"), but they, used well, can really reduce verbosity.

bobthepanda 6y ago
Also, a lot of verbosity in Java came from people going off the rails with design patterns to hide crap multiple levels deep in a file with 5+ words in the class name. If you have a hammer everything’s a nail.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  Frameworks like Spring/Spring Boot kind of force that as well with their runtime creation of proxy classes.
Scarbutt 6y ago
I'm surprised you didn't mention the Streams API.

ragnese 6y ago

I agree with your points here, but just want to add that, while Java's generics are better than the non-existent generics in Go, I still find Java's type system to be really subpar for today's era. The type system is not strong or expressive enough to do full type erasure, but then we're stuck with type-erased generics, so it's just incredibly frustrating.

twh270 6y ago

Much of the verbosity came from the false presumption that every field in every class needs a public getter and setter. (I cannot express in words how terrible this is.) Some can come from the framework, mostly poorly-designed ones. I think Java 11 and higher are reasonably terse/expressive without being overly dense.

DaiPlusPlus 6y ago
Remind me, why doesn’t Java have object-properties yet? So far the only reason I’ve concluded is Java’s language designers’ egos were so damaged by C#, Swift, Kotlin, TypeScript, etc that after dogmatically denying the developer-productivity benefits of properties for the past 20 years that to concede now would mark the end of Java as a language entirely. ...I kid, but seriously I haven’t heard any compelling argument from the Java camp yet for refusing to add this feature. Object-properties are easily the lowest-hanging-fruit with the biggest productivity-gains. Heck, even some of the most popular C++ compilers support object-properties as proprietary extensions.
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  It's so crazy - with all the huge and radical features they've added this would surely have been so simple by comparison and yet added more value than about 80% of the things they've done. It's about half the reason I still use Groovy now since Java has solved most of the rest over time. But I just cannot go back to writing getters and setters!
- kaba0 6y ago
  I believe the Java lang team simply dislikes the Java Beans convention, and if they see a better future, they rather not maintain properties forever. I think the current future view is Withers ( https://github.com/openjdk/amber-docs/blob/master/eg-drafts/reconstruction-records-and-classes.md https://github.com/openjdk/amber-docs/blob/master/eg-drafts/... ).
doctor_eval 6y ago
Couldn’t agree more, the madness of idiomatically adding setters and getters to every field was something I ended up putting an end to in my last gig, and my life improved immeasurably as a result.

hibbelig 6y ago

About verbosity: you needed to define classes for so many things. Eg you want others to hook into processing in certain places. So you create a listener interface with some methods. And the provider needed to work with those, and the consumer also needs to work with them. In modern Java maybe you can make do with functional interfaces and lambda, but it doesn’t always work I think. And in emacs: the provider does run-hooks, and the consumer defines a function and says add-hook. Done. Very little ceremony.

kerblang 6y ago

Sorry that I find it necessary for yet another answer to your verbosity question, but: The real verbosity is in the standard libraries. What would be a one-liner in any other language is usually at least 2, often 3, and sometimes enough that you end up writing your own wrapper function or library. Especially noticeable is the agony of Lists & Maps, which are first-class citizens in most languages (classic job interview question: what is the difference between ArrayList and LinkedList? Real answer: Nobody actually uses LinkedList). The stdlib often seems to be written by people who had no intention of using it. I guess maybe this applies to C++ as well, so for some folks it seems normal.

kaba0 6y ago
There is List.of() and Map.of() now. And I would say, Java has one of the better standard libs out there in my opinion.