7 ms·

Could you please support your statement with reasons?

weatherlight 5y ago
https://thenextweb.com/news/universities-finally-realize-java-bad-introductory-programming-language https://thenextweb.com/news/universities-finally-realize-jav... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java#:~:text=The%20Java%20programming%20language%20and,vulnerabilities%20in%20the%20primary%20Java https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java#:~:text=The%... https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Alan-Kay-dislike-Java https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Alan-Kay-dislike-Java https://vic.nightfall.moe/2016/04/03/Some-reasons-why-I-hate-Java/ https://vic.nightfall.moe/2016/04/03/Some-reasons-why-I-hate... https://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/01/08/0348239/professors-slam-java-as-damaging-to-students https://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/01/08/0348239/profe...
Longhanks 5y ago
public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello, world!"); } } vs print("Hello, world!") Please comment again if you still cannot see the bloat/unnecessary verbosity.
- grishka 5y ago
  Global scope is a terrible invention. The less implicitness there is, the better.
  - weatherlight 5y ago
    then write assembly.
    - grishka 5y ago
      What I'm trying to say that at some point in piling up abstraction layers, abstractions stop being helpful and start getting in the way.
    - kjeetgill 5y ago
      What? Barring the stack, everything's essentially global in assembly. Like you can touch your process whole address space from anywhere!
      - weatherlight 5y ago
        also, everything is explicit. the op seems to correlate the two.
  - valenterry 5y ago
    Global scope is not a terrible invention and if you look carefully then you will notice that the Java version uses it as well. Or where is the import to get "System" into scope? It's imported globally everywhere (just like all everything from java.lang). So the only question is: should "print" be burried under layers or not. I don't think the advantages of burrying are really worth it.
    - kaba0 5y ago
      OP meant the public static void main part (that is you define what happens encapsulated in a class) Of course implicit imports are needed, like what else would you have without?
      - valenterry 5y ago
        > that is you define what happens encapsulated in a class Apart from that it is really unintuitive to have something "static" within a class (which is commonly understand as a template), it is not encapsulated because it is static _and_ public. _And_ now you can search for this thing everywhere - and what happens if you find two of them? Yeah no, the idea of "public static void main" wasn't a great one, no matter how I look at it. It's much better to be explicit and ask the user to decide which file they want to use as the starting point. > Of course implicit imports are needed, like what else would you have without They are of course not needed. You could also just import everything manually. Okay, Java's import suck, but in a better language you could do "import prelude._" in the beginning of every file and otherwise you are left with keywords only. Not saying that's a great idea, but it certainly can work without implicit imports.
- kaba0 5y ago
  But that verbosity doesn’t scale with code size, so it is largely meaningless.
BMorearty 5y ago
“It’s extremely busy and verbose” were the reasons. I agree with those reasons and I’ve always felt Java sucks because of them. When Java first came out I was a C/C++ programmer and was excited to learn it. Very quickly became disillusioned because it was incredibly verbose. I hoped the language would evolve quickly but it took FOREVER. Meanwhile Microsoft introduced C#, whose v1 looked like a copy of Java, and very quickly evolved the language to make it much better. They did what I hoped Sun Micro would do. But Sun just sat there and twiddled their thumbs.
ronri19 5y ago
Not sure about the person above but the following are my opinion on why I don't like Java: 1. no unsigned integers 2. no freestanding functions 3. pom files are a huge pain 4. the com.blah.blah.blah ridiculously long package path precedent makes it awful to work with if you don't have an ide 5. you can't actually use javac to compile your code. everything is so big and complicated you have to use ant, gradle, maven, etc. 6. too much boilerplate. "public static void main" etc. There's a few more, but they'd take more than a sentence to explain.
- xxs 5y ago
  >no unsigned integers technically, char is unsigned. For practical purposes use ByteBuffer. >no freestanding functions you can "import static" all the static functions you want; it's not any different than C, where you need to include the headers. > pom files are a huge pain That has nothing to do w/ java, itself, like at all. >you can't actually use javac to compile your code. everything is so big and complicated you have to use ant, gradle, maven, etc. If you use ant, how did you get to use pom? That's pretty much saying that using 'make' is terrible. For personal projects that involve no web, I don't quite need anything else but the JDK, itself. In that case, it's totally doable to call javac form the command line.
- karmakaze 5y ago
  Great (unintended) straw-man comment. These are all minor reasons in the context of an introduction to developing software. Yes, there's some initial setup, but once that's done and you're learning how programs are constructed with classes, objects, methods and where static typing can help you, they're all the important things that will carry you well into a career.
  - dunefox 5y ago
    Just because you can have a career in Java despite the disadvantages does not mean that they're not disadvantages that most other languages don't have.
    - karmakaze 5y ago
dvdkon 5y ago
Lots of other good arguments have been posted, but I'd like to say something to the teaching aspect. In high school, we had four years of Java. I already knew most of the curriculum at the start, so others would sometimes ask me for help with assignments. Quite a few times, even after years of school, I'd run into people being confused by classes, instances, what curly braced blocks meant on a class vs on a control statement... You could say the class should've been taught better, or that the students just weren't good enough, but I think a good tool (programming language) should help users, not be a barrier to overcome. Programming in Java doesn't require too many concepts, but you have to start with all of them at once, and I think some students just never got over that initial step. It's of course debatable whether another language would have been better or whether Java really contributed to the problem, but I think we can agree there are languages that better lend themselves to teaching complete beginners.

https://thenextweb.com/news/universities-finally-realize-java-bad-introductory-programming-language https://thenextweb.com/news/universities-finally-realize-jav... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java#:~:text=The%20Java%20programming%20language%20and,vulnerabilities%20in%20the%20primary%20Java https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Java#:~:text=The%... https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Alan-Kay-dislike-Java https://www.quora.com/Why-did-Alan-Kay-dislike-Java https://vic.nightfall.moe/2016/04/03/Some-reasons-why-I-hate-Java/ https://vic.nightfall.moe/2016/04/03/Some-reasons-why-I-hate... https://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/01/08/0348239/professors-slam-java-as-damaging-to-students https://developers.slashdot.org/story/08/01/08/0348239/profe...

Longhanks 5y ago

public class Main { public static void main(String[] args) { System.out.println("Hello, world!"); } } vs print("Hello, world!") Please comment again if you still cannot see the bloat/unnecessary verbosity.

grishka 5y ago
Global scope is a terrible invention. The less implicitness there is, the better.
- weatherlight 5y ago
  then write assembly.
  - grishka 5y ago
    What I'm trying to say that at some point in piling up abstraction layers, abstractions stop being helpful and start getting in the way.
  - kjeetgill 5y ago
    What? Barring the stack, everything's essentially global in assembly. Like you can touch your process whole address space from anywhere!
    - weatherlight 5y ago
      also, everything is explicit. the op seems to correlate the two.
- valenterry 5y ago
  Global scope is not a terrible invention and if you look carefully then you will notice that the Java version uses it as well. Or where is the import to get "System" into scope? It's imported globally everywhere (just like all everything from java.lang). So the only question is: should "print" be burried under layers or not. I don't think the advantages of burrying are really worth it.
  - kaba0 5y ago
    OP meant the public static void main part (that is you define what happens encapsulated in a class) Of course implicit imports are needed, like what else would you have without?
    - valenterry 5y ago
      > that is you define what happens encapsulated in a class Apart from that it is really unintuitive to have something "static" within a class (which is commonly understand as a template), it is not encapsulated because it is static _and_ public. _And_ now you can search for this thing everywhere - and what happens if you find two of them? Yeah no, the idea of "public static void main" wasn't a great one, no matter how I look at it. It's much better to be explicit and ask the user to decide which file they want to use as the starting point. > Of course implicit imports are needed, like what else would you have without They are of course not needed. You could also just import everything manually. Okay, Java's import suck, but in a better language you could do "import prelude._" in the beginning of every file and otherwise you are left with keywords only. Not saying that's a great idea, but it certainly can work without implicit imports.
kaba0 5y ago
But that verbosity doesn’t scale with code size, so it is largely meaningless.

BMorearty 5y ago

“It’s extremely busy and verbose” were the reasons. I agree with those reasons and I’ve always felt Java sucks because of them. When Java first came out I was a C/C++ programmer and was excited to learn it. Very quickly became disillusioned because it was incredibly verbose. I hoped the language would evolve quickly but it took FOREVER. Meanwhile Microsoft introduced C#, whose v1 looked like a copy of Java, and very quickly evolved the language to make it much better. They did what I hoped Sun Micro would do. But Sun just sat there and twiddled their thumbs.

ronri19 5y ago

Not sure about the person above but the following are my opinion on why I don't like Java: 1. no unsigned integers 2. no freestanding functions 3. pom files are a huge pain 4. the com.blah.blah.blah ridiculously long package path precedent makes it awful to work with if you don't have an ide 5. you can't actually use javac to compile your code. everything is so big and complicated you have to use ant, gradle, maven, etc. 6. too much boilerplate. "public static void main" etc. There's a few more, but they'd take more than a sentence to explain.

xxs 5y ago
>no unsigned integers technically, char is unsigned. For practical purposes use ByteBuffer. >no freestanding functions you can "import static" all the static functions you want; it's not any different than C, where you need to include the headers. > pom files are a huge pain That has nothing to do w/ java, itself, like at all. >you can't actually use javac to compile your code. everything is so big and complicated you have to use ant, gradle, maven, etc. If you use ant, how did you get to use pom? That's pretty much saying that using 'make' is terrible. For personal projects that involve no web, I don't quite need anything else but the JDK, itself. In that case, it's totally doable to call javac form the command line.
karmakaze 5y ago
Great (unintended) straw-man comment. These are all minor reasons in the context of an introduction to developing software. Yes, there's some initial setup, but once that's done and you're learning how programs are constructed with classes, objects, methods and where static typing can help you, they're all the important things that will carry you well into a career.
- dunefox 5y ago
  Just because you can have a career in Java despite the disadvantages does not mean that they're not disadvantages that most other languages don't have.
  - karmakaze 5y ago

dvdkon 5y ago

Lots of other good arguments have been posted, but I'd like to say something to the teaching aspect. In high school, we had four years of Java. I already knew most of the curriculum at the start, so others would sometimes ask me for help with assignments. Quite a few times, even after years of school, I'd run into people being confused by classes, instances, what curly braced blocks meant on a class vs on a control statement... You could say the class should've been taught better, or that the students just weren't good enough, but I think a good tool (programming language) should help users, not be a barrier to overcome. Programming in Java doesn't require too many concepts, but you have to start with all of them at once, and I think some students just never got over that initial step. It's of course debatable whether another language would have been better or whether Java really contributed to the problem, but I think we can agree there are languages that better lend themselves to teaching complete beginners.