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>>No, it doesn't. If you can't write concise Java, you're doing something wrong. And if you can't read code well, go practice some more. Don't know why you are

>>No, it doesn't. If you can't write concise Java, you're doing something wrong. And if you can't read code well, go practice some more. Don't know why you are getting down voted. Even Joel Spolsky says that what really makes the difference is the programmer, not the language. If you suck in Java you will probably suck in other languages.

icebraining 15y ago
Then why did he wrote his own language for his product? Oh right, because languages do matter. Sure, what makes one a great programmer is language independent, but that doesn't mean you can have the same code quality in every language. There's a reason why professionals in every field buy top quality tools and not cheap disposable crap.
- felipemnoa 15y ago
  >>There's a reason why professionals in every field buy top quality tools and not cheap disposable crap. Agree But Java is not cheap disposable crap. At this point it is more a matter of taste. You don't like Java fine, but other people are able to be just as productive as you using Java and probably more depending on the programmer itself. At the end of the day it is the programmer that makes the difference.
  - eropple 15y ago
    I would strongly contest the assertion that there is someone of equivalent programming aptitude and experience who will be as productive in Java as I would be in Scala or Clojure or C#. Boilerplate kills. It kills again when you have to go back and try to re-read code slathered in it.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
    - speckledjim 15y ago
      If you're held back by boilerplate, you're simply not a very good programmer. You need to learn to read and write code just like you read and write english. Yes there's boilerplate, but it's not a big deal. It's not something you need to worry about. Take the sentence I just wrote: "It's not something you need to worry about". That is 8 words, 5 of which are boilerplate. The only important words are "NOT" "SOMETHING" "WORRY". Who cares? It didn't slow me down typing out the other ones. If you're really spending that much time writing code, you haven't yet worked out that programming is 90% thinking about things and 10% writing it.
factorizer 15y ago
I know why he gets downvoted: There's a lot of kids on hacker news that only use ruby and/or javascript and they really don't want to hear about them being bad at something. hell they wrote a WEB APPLICATION. Now ain't that something.
- eropple 15y ago
  That's just foolish. I write Java daily for a very large web company, and I downvoted him. Because his claim is nonsensical. I downvoted you too, because your claim is trollish and wrong. I have been writing Java since I was 13. I am 23 now. I have been paid for code written in C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, F#, and Python. My personal projects are written in Scala, C#, C++, and JavaScript. I emphatically do not use Ruby for personal or professional projects (unless forced, with regards to the latter). From this reasonably broad body of experience, I am quite certain that I would be vastly more productive if the language wasn't consistently getting in my way. As it is, I have an unhealthy number of vim macros to deal with all the boilerplate that Java foists upon a developer. It is insufficiently expressive without them, and once those macros are applied the resultant boilerplate code (method objects, for example) greatly decrease readability and increase potential failures, due to more difficulty in conceptualizing and reviewing the code. His posts also belie a lack of perspective. He doesn't "write with anyone else," yet I would venture to guess that the primary use case of Java, today, is in environments with more than one developer. He doesn't "use 3rd party libs", which suggests a lack of familiarity with his own ecosystem of tools, let alone those that provide these features that others (including myself) have indicated are part of what makes Java unpleasant to use. (Seriously--if you're not using Apache Commons at the very least, there is a credible argument that you're probably reinventing wheels and Doing It Wrong.) And he has a critical lack of perspective about what are generally considered basic programming constructs: if you think closures and first-class functions exist to "make some developers happy," you are ignorant of why they exist in the first place. Do you think that now-very-standard tools like map, fold, etc. would be generally adopted if the only way to use them was Java-boilerplate code-vomit? . pivo said it nicely upthread: "I'm tired of visually parsing 20 lines of a Java method and filtering out all the boilerplate iteration junk just to find the one or two lines that actually do something. Often this kind of thing can be reduced to a few simple, relevant lines when you have closures, for example." And he is right. Because this is what Java makes you do. In 2011, it has been surpassed in terms of flexibility, expressiveness, and utility by other JVM languages that allow you to pull in Java objects and work with them, but write your code in a way that is much more pleasant. . But no--clearly we're all kids, writing Ruby and JavaScript. Except that this kid almost certainly writes more, better Java than you do, and still finds it a regular source of frustration simply because it isn't good enough. Perhaps you should be less upset when people demonstrate that you are lacking in perspective about your favorite toys.

icebraining 15y ago

Then why did he wrote his own language for his product? Oh right, because languages do matter. Sure, what makes one a great programmer is language independent, but that doesn't mean you can have the same code quality in every language. There's a reason why professionals in every field buy top quality tools and not cheap disposable crap.

felipemnoa 15y ago
>>There's a reason why professionals in every field buy top quality tools and not cheap disposable crap. Agree But Java is not cheap disposable crap. At this point it is more a matter of taste. You don't like Java fine, but other people are able to be just as productive as you using Java and probably more depending on the programmer itself. At the end of the day it is the programmer that makes the difference.
- eropple 15y ago
  I would strongly contest the assertion that there is someone of equivalent programming aptitude and experience who will be as productive in Java as I would be in Scala or Clojure or C#. Boilerplate kills. It kills again when you have to go back and try to re-read code slathered in it.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - speckledjim 15y ago
    If you're held back by boilerplate, you're simply not a very good programmer. You need to learn to read and write code just like you read and write english. Yes there's boilerplate, but it's not a big deal. It's not something you need to worry about. Take the sentence I just wrote: "It's not something you need to worry about". That is 8 words, 5 of which are boilerplate. The only important words are "NOT" "SOMETHING" "WORRY". Who cares? It didn't slow me down typing out the other ones. If you're really spending that much time writing code, you haven't yet worked out that programming is 90% thinking about things and 10% writing it.

factorizer 15y ago

I know why he gets downvoted: There's a lot of kids on hacker news that only use ruby and/or javascript and they really don't want to hear about them being bad at something. hell they wrote a WEB APPLICATION. Now ain't that something.

eropple 15y ago
That's just foolish. I write Java daily for a very large web company, and I downvoted him. Because his claim is nonsensical. I downvoted you too, because your claim is trollish and wrong. I have been writing Java since I was 13. I am 23 now. I have been paid for code written in C#, Java, JavaScript, PHP, F#, and Python. My personal projects are written in Scala, C#, C++, and JavaScript. I emphatically do not use Ruby for personal or professional projects (unless forced, with regards to the latter). From this reasonably broad body of experience, I am quite certain that I would be vastly more productive if the language wasn't consistently getting in my way. As it is, I have an unhealthy number of vim macros to deal with all the boilerplate that Java foists upon a developer. It is insufficiently expressive without them, and once those macros are applied the resultant boilerplate code (method objects, for example) greatly decrease readability and increase potential failures, due to more difficulty in conceptualizing and reviewing the code. His posts also belie a lack of perspective. He doesn't "write with anyone else," yet I would venture to guess that the primary use case of Java, today, is in environments with more than one developer. He doesn't "use 3rd party libs", which suggests a lack of familiarity with his own ecosystem of tools, let alone those that provide these features that others (including myself) have indicated are part of what makes Java unpleasant to use. (Seriously--if you're not using Apache Commons at the very least, there is a credible argument that you're probably reinventing wheels and Doing It Wrong.) And he has a critical lack of perspective about what are generally considered basic programming constructs: if you think closures and first-class functions exist to "make some developers happy," you are ignorant of why they exist in the first place. Do you think that now-very-standard tools like map, fold, etc. would be generally adopted if the only way to use them was Java-boilerplate code-vomit? . pivo said it nicely upthread: "I'm tired of visually parsing 20 lines of a Java method and filtering out all the boilerplate iteration junk just to find the one or two lines that actually do something. Often this kind of thing can be reduced to a few simple, relevant lines when you have closures, for example." And he is right. Because this is what Java makes you do. In 2011, it has been surpassed in terms of flexibility, expressiveness, and utility by other JVM languages that allow you to pull in Java objects and work with them, but write your code in a way that is much more pleasant. . But no--clearly we're all kids, writing Ruby and JavaScript. Except that this kid almost certainly writes more, better Java than you do, and still finds it a regular source of frustration simply because it isn't good enough. Perhaps you should be less upset when people demonstrate that you are lacking in perspective about your favorite toys.