5 ms·

I just wish it'd go away entirely. I'm not a dev. But an admin. And I despise supporting or troubleshooting Java applications. Unfortunately that's my life

I just wish it'd go away entirely. I'm not a dev. But an admin. And I despise supporting or troubleshooting Java applications. Unfortunately that's my life these days. From an admin perspective, python, php, hell.. Even ruby. All fine. But Java is a nightmare.

cosmotic 5y ago
Can you explain why it's so hard? I've had a lot better luck running Java apps than Python.
- geodel 5y ago
  I am not admin, but kind of manage non-prod servers. One problem with Java is that a lot of things are half-done. If it totally relied on OS it would have worked, or if Java solution was thorough it would have worked. SSL management and Java app monitoring with tools like jconsole comes to mind. But others might have different annoyances. It is working on one server and then broke on a newly built server apparently due to some network settings which devs/ app admins are not aware of.
  - ivan_gammel 5y ago
    I don’t think this is Java itself. Many Java apps are not designed with admin UX in mind. Those that have good UX usually don’t land on admin’s plate anyway and are managed by devs or devops.
    - geodel 5y ago
      jconsole is not user developed Java app, it is built-in tool comes with JDK distribution. And problem was not with UI it was that UI wouldn't come up because of some obscure network setting, with no useful error displayed back to user to fix issue.
      - ivan_gammel 5y ago
        UX != UI != GUI
- duskwuff 5y ago
  Not the parent but: Java has a long tradition of reimplementing things in Java rather than relying on system libraries. Everything from OpenSSL to tzinfo to libpng has its own Java implementation, entirely separate from anything else on the system.
  - jt2190 5y ago
    > Java has a long tradition of reimplementing things in Java rather than relying on system libraries. Er, that’s kind of the point of the Java Virtual Machine… It keeps you from tying your application to a particular system architecture. I’ve noticed that JVM administration tends to fall into the “no man’s land” between devs and admins: Devs figure that the Admins will take care of it, and Admins are annoyed that they need to use a separate set of tools to admin the Java apps (and are not eager to learn them.)
  - bityard 5y ago
    Web browsers do the same thing, they vendor everything they can to make the cross-platform experience better. Given that browsers are pretty much full-blown SDKs these days, and with everything being deployed as either a web app or an Electron app, I think it's fair to say that Chrome and Firefox are the new Java.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
dimitar 5y ago
Depends on the Java application, I feel your pain if need to manage application servers, but supporting and running modern Java applications shipped as jar files or docker images is not hard at all.
manuelabeledo 5y ago
Working on a successful Java shop with thousands of deployments per month. Curious about what's so hard about Java.
- wiz21c 5y ago
  having to run several Java runtime versions on the same computer. I developped some years ago and that was an issue: some applications require 1.7, others 1.8, with some funny security specifics (I think it was not possible to set the security level for certificate on a per-version basis)
  - manuelabeledo 5y ago
    What’s so hard about that? I genuinely don’t understand. I run applications on different JREs concurrently, and I yet have to find any issues with it.
- Supermancho 5y ago
  Curious why you dont recognize the obvious. The different runtimes each have their own behavioral/configuration quirks, library incompatibilities, and workarounds. This leaves stack traces as being less than helpful without full context.
ysleepy 5y ago
That's absurd, the ops tooling is top notch and claiming python deployments are better is laughable. FlightRecorder, single jar deployables, the JDK cli utils to get stacktraces and heap dumps etc are good. No npm getting a zillion files. Just get some jvm, point it at your jar and done. If you are talking 2001 servlet container and so on, sure terrible, but if you are running those, switch jobs, thats not java's fault.

cosmotic 5y ago

Can you explain why it's so hard? I've had a lot better luck running Java apps than Python.

geodel 5y ago
I am not admin, but kind of manage non-prod servers. One problem with Java is that a lot of things are half-done. If it totally relied on OS it would have worked, or if Java solution was thorough it would have worked. SSL management and Java app monitoring with tools like jconsole comes to mind. But others might have different annoyances. It is working on one server and then broke on a newly built server apparently due to some network settings which devs/ app admins are not aware of.
- ivan_gammel 5y ago
  I don’t think this is Java itself. Many Java apps are not designed with admin UX in mind. Those that have good UX usually don’t land on admin’s plate anyway and are managed by devs or devops.
  - geodel 5y ago
    jconsole is not user developed Java app, it is built-in tool comes with JDK distribution. And problem was not with UI it was that UI wouldn't come up because of some obscure network setting, with no useful error displayed back to user to fix issue.
    - ivan_gammel 5y ago
      UX != UI != GUI
duskwuff 5y ago
Not the parent but: Java has a long tradition of reimplementing things in Java rather than relying on system libraries. Everything from OpenSSL to tzinfo to libpng has its own Java implementation, entirely separate from anything else on the system.
- jt2190 5y ago
  > Java has a long tradition of reimplementing things in Java rather than relying on system libraries. Er, that’s kind of the point of the Java Virtual Machine… It keeps you from tying your application to a particular system architecture. I’ve noticed that JVM administration tends to fall into the “no man’s land” between devs and admins: Devs figure that the Admins will take care of it, and Admins are annoyed that they need to use a separate set of tools to admin the Java apps (and are not eager to learn them.)
- bityard 5y ago
  Web browsers do the same thing, they vendor everything they can to make the cross-platform experience better. Given that browsers are pretty much full-blown SDKs these days, and with everything being deployed as either a web app or an Electron app, I think it's fair to say that Chrome and Firefox are the new Java.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

dimitar 5y ago

Depends on the Java application, I feel your pain if need to manage application servers, but supporting and running modern Java applications shipped as jar files or docker images is not hard at all.

manuelabeledo 5y ago

Working on a successful Java shop with thousands of deployments per month. Curious about what's so hard about Java.

wiz21c 5y ago
having to run several Java runtime versions on the same computer. I developped some years ago and that was an issue: some applications require 1.7, others 1.8, with some funny security specifics (I think it was not possible to set the security level for certificate on a per-version basis)
- manuelabeledo 5y ago
  What’s so hard about that? I genuinely don’t understand. I run applications on different JREs concurrently, and I yet have to find any issues with it.
Supermancho 5y ago
Curious why you dont recognize the obvious. The different runtimes each have their own behavioral/configuration quirks, library incompatibilities, and workarounds. This leaves stack traces as being less than helpful without full context.

ysleepy 5y ago

That's absurd, the ops tooling is top notch and claiming python deployments are better is laughable. FlightRecorder, single jar deployables, the JDK cli utils to get stacktraces and heap dumps etc are good. No npm getting a zillion files. Just get some jvm, point it at your jar and done. If you are talking 2001 servlet container and so on, sure terrible, but if you are running those, switch jobs, thats not java's fault.