3 ms·

I also don't understand where is the "fun to write" aspect exactly that the author insists about. "This cannot be understated: Java simply feels good to write"

by V-2 6y ago

I also don't understand where is the "fun to write" aspect exactly that the author insists about. "This cannot be understated: Java simply feels good to write" But why? The only explanation that follows is that "a lot of this is due to the craftsmanship JetBrains puts into IntelliJ IDEA. Everything is autocompleted, jump-to-definition is fast, find-usage works well, and refactoring is easy". I too think that IDEA is an excellent IDE, but why should Java take the credit for it. If anything, the more it needs an excellent IDE in order to feel pleasant, the worse it says about the language itself. It really looks to me like the "ignorant computer science undergrad" mainly worked with JavaScript (having only dabbled with C++ and a few other languages as part of his uni courses), and got excited by discovering a proper IDE and a statically typed language that happens to have a low entry threshold.

watwut 6y ago
> I too think that IDEA is an excellent IDE, but why should Java take the credit for it. If anything, the more it needs an excellent IDE in order to feel pleasant, the worse it says about the language itself. It actually does, the language itself makes those features possible. The reason javascript does not have as good IDE is that language itself stands in a way.
- dunefox 6y ago
  You mean by having a (not very powerful) static type system and constructs that serve as name spaces for auto-completion lookup. Any language with modules and a static type system supports this, if the effort is put into creating the tools.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  It's a bit of a "stop hitting yourself" situation. Java features make awesome tooling possible, but awesome tooling is necessary due to some really bad features of Java. So I don't care if a different language has worse tooling when it also does not have the problems that Java has that the tooling solves.
  - watwut 6y ago
    The result of that tooling is better. It is easier to read, navigate, refactor and write then supposedly superior language without tooling. The large the project, the bigger the gap gets.

by V-2 6y ago

watwut 6y ago

> I too think that IDEA is an excellent IDE, but why should Java take the credit for it. If anything, the more it needs an excellent IDE in order to feel pleasant, the worse it says about the language itself. It actually does, the language itself makes those features possible. The reason javascript does not have as good IDE is that language itself stands in a way.

dunefox 6y ago
You mean by having a (not very powerful) static type system and constructs that serve as name spaces for auto-completion lookup. Any language with modules and a static type system supports this, if the effort is put into creating the tools.
blacktriangle 6y ago
It's a bit of a "stop hitting yourself" situation. Java features make awesome tooling possible, but awesome tooling is necessary due to some really bad features of Java. So I don't care if a different language has worse tooling when it also does not have the problems that Java has that the tooling solves.
- watwut 6y ago
  The result of that tooling is better. It is easier to read, navigate, refactor and write then supposedly superior language without tooling. The large the project, the bigger the gap gets.