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> I would say Java the language is fine, When I was using it I didn't particularly mind it except for the clumsy handling of functions (i.e. as objects instead

> I would say Java the language is fine, When I was using it I didn't particularly mind it except for the clumsy handling of functions (i.e. as objects instead of first-class citizens) and verbosity (no automatic accessors, implicit typing, etc). Adding Lombok solved most of these. *EDIT: Except for runtime type erasure of generics which caused (not sure about new Java) performance issues and made certain type operations difficult. > but the culture around it is what's grown the distaste many have for it. Having to debug esoteric issues with classpath, Spring, CDI, JPA, Aspect4j, etc. is hell on earth. I've lived that life and have no desire to do so again. Because Java is the lingua franca of enterprise development it also tends to rear its ugly head on modernization projects and rewrites. 80% of the abhorrently-engineered codebases I've encountered in my career were written in Java by body shops (C# and Coldfusion were the runners up). > The overuse of design patterns, etc. I'm not an adherent of the design pattern cargo cult but I'm one of four people under the age of 50 that have actually read the GoF book and I do indeed sometimes name objects after patterns described in the book; I typically design components and name them such after the fact as opposed to constructing systems from the ground up using design patterns. Calling a thing that persists comments in a database `CommentRepository` is a lot more useful than calling it `CommentHelper`.

pjmlp 5y ago
Try doing the same with CORBA and DCOM.
stickfigure 5y ago
> Having to debug esoteric issues with classpath, Spring, CDI, JPA, Aspect4j, etc. is hell on earth. The term "DLL Hell" came from Windows development before it. The Node/Ruby/Python equivalent is getting native libraries to build (node-gyp, I'm looking at you!). I've burned days in Ruby Version Hell and Node Version Hell. Javascript dependency upgrades are a nightmare compared to Java dependency upgrades. I don't think this problem has gone away, or even improved. It's just a grim fact of life, and Java doesn't deserve special mention.
- alexjplant 5y ago
  The things you mention are no fun either (`node-gyp` in particular), but the Java issues I encountered were far beyond run-of-the-mill runtime linking and interop issues you describe. The details are lost to time and a bit fuzzy but I recall the primary issue being competing CDI implementations stepping on each other when we tried to use JSF with a recent version of Spring... and because most everything in the Java ecosystem was doing some opaque Aspect4J magic it was nigh-impossible to debug.
- tombert 5y ago
  Despite my love for the language (and Stack has mostly fixed this), I feel like Haskell's "Cabal Hell" is amongst my least-favorite headaches from my past. Getting weird, hard to follow conflicts between different packages on Hackage and dealing with weird compiler hack flags is something that never got fun or easy.
progmetaldev 5y ago
I think the real majority of hate that I've seen for design patterns are when juniors go into a system looking to slap a design pattern anywhere they possibly can, quickly creating a ball of mud that is difficult to work with and figure out. At least that's been my experience (and I have to sadly admit I did the same when I was a junior without a mentor to help me through figuring out how to refactor my code into these patterns only when needed).
PaulHoule 5y ago
If you don’t like putting objects and classes on the left you can write import static example.Library.*; And proceed to write in your main method var x = someFunction(6, ‘that’); in a style like C, LISP, or ML. You can write a whole program (like the answer for a HackerRank problem) in a single file. The developers of Java have always respected the ML family and JDK17 incorporates pattern matching, records, algebraic types and and many other features that make functional programming fun. The type erasure problem for generic classes goes away when you use generic methods; type inference works without limitation for generic methods and is great for defining APIs for internal domain-specific languages any(grammar,you.want(ifIt.parses(ON_THE_LEFT))); the great thing about Java is a quality IDE is certain to support this programming style. Any complaint that the internal DSL is too verbose can be attacked by the use of code generation which is straightforward to incorporate in a maven build and your IDE. (The LISPer is using code generation and you have to do it if you want to keep up.)
matwood 5y ago
I'm under 50 and read the GoF book ;) I'm one of the rare people who was writing vb and then c# during the terrible Java j2ee days. Then I got a job in a startup using Java which avoid the 'enterprise' idioms. So my experiences with Java over the last decade or so have been mostly good (except for a foray into Hibernate, never again - jOOQ for life). No crazy class models, no xml configuration, etc...
slaymaker1907 5y ago
Amen to esoteric Spring issues. I once dealt with a jar that suddenly started failing despite no code changes because Spring uses the order of files in the zip file/jar to determine initialization order. Turns out one that particular time files ended up in a weird order inside the jar file.
- The_Colonel 5y ago
  It's natural to read and initialize the classes as they come, _unless the code defines a specific dependency order_. This looks like a developer simply did not declare proper dependency between classes/beans.

pjmlp 5y ago

Try doing the same with CORBA and DCOM.

stickfigure 5y ago

> Having to debug esoteric issues with classpath, Spring, CDI, JPA, Aspect4j, etc. is hell on earth. The term "DLL Hell" came from Windows development before it. The Node/Ruby/Python equivalent is getting native libraries to build (node-gyp, I'm looking at you!). I've burned days in Ruby Version Hell and Node Version Hell. Javascript dependency upgrades are a nightmare compared to Java dependency upgrades. I don't think this problem has gone away, or even improved. It's just a grim fact of life, and Java doesn't deserve special mention.

alexjplant 5y ago
The things you mention are no fun either (`node-gyp` in particular), but the Java issues I encountered were far beyond run-of-the-mill runtime linking and interop issues you describe. The details are lost to time and a bit fuzzy but I recall the primary issue being competing CDI implementations stepping on each other when we tried to use JSF with a recent version of Spring... and because most everything in the Java ecosystem was doing some opaque Aspect4J magic it was nigh-impossible to debug.
tombert 5y ago
Despite my love for the language (and Stack has mostly fixed this), I feel like Haskell's "Cabal Hell" is amongst my least-favorite headaches from my past. Getting weird, hard to follow conflicts between different packages on Hackage and dealing with weird compiler hack flags is something that never got fun or easy.

progmetaldev 5y ago

I think the real majority of hate that I've seen for design patterns are when juniors go into a system looking to slap a design pattern anywhere they possibly can, quickly creating a ball of mud that is difficult to work with and figure out. At least that's been my experience (and I have to sadly admit I did the same when I was a junior without a mentor to help me through figuring out how to refactor my code into these patterns only when needed).

PaulHoule 5y ago

If you don’t like putting objects and classes on the left you can write import static example.Library.*; And proceed to write in your main method var x = someFunction(6, ‘that’); in a style like C, LISP, or ML. You can write a whole program (like the answer for a HackerRank problem) in a single file. The developers of Java have always respected the ML family and JDK17 incorporates pattern matching, records, algebraic types and and many other features that make functional programming fun. The type erasure problem for generic classes goes away when you use generic methods; type inference works without limitation for generic methods and is great for defining APIs for internal domain-specific languages any(grammar,you.want(ifIt.parses(ON_THE_LEFT))); the great thing about Java is a quality IDE is certain to support this programming style. Any complaint that the internal DSL is too verbose can be attacked by the use of code generation which is straightforward to incorporate in a maven build and your IDE. (The LISPer is using code generation and you have to do it if you want to keep up.)

matwood 5y ago

I'm under 50 and read the GoF book ;) I'm one of the rare people who was writing vb and then c# during the terrible Java j2ee days. Then I got a job in a startup using Java which avoid the 'enterprise' idioms. So my experiences with Java over the last decade or so have been mostly good (except for a foray into Hibernate, never again - jOOQ for life). No crazy class models, no xml configuration, etc...

slaymaker1907 5y ago

Amen to esoteric Spring issues. I once dealt with a jar that suddenly started failing despite no code changes because Spring uses the order of files in the zip file/jar to determine initialization order. Turns out one that particular time files ended up in a weird order inside the jar file.

The_Colonel 5y ago
It's natural to read and initialize the classes as they come, _unless the code defines a specific dependency order_. This looks like a developer simply did not declare proper dependency between classes/beans.