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> *I stopped using it because I stopped wanting to write 10000 lines for doing simple things. I want to write less code now. Java 11, with the introduction of
by jaytaylor 5y ago
> *I stopped using it because I stopped wanting to write 10000 lines for doing simple things. I want to write less code now.
Java 11, with the introduction of lambdas, makes it trivial to express what used to require 10-15+ lines in 1-3 lines.
The syntax can be a little tricky at first, and without an auto-complete IDE it's still damn near impossible to figure out what the correct 1-3 lines should be unless you're really up to date on the streaming collections APIs.
The bottom line is, things are still improving with every release on the developer quality-of-life front. I've been pleasantly surprised! Caveat emptor, all languages have their ideal use-cases and tradeoffs. There is no holy grail (yet).
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- wwweston 5y ago> Java 11, with the introduction of lambdas, makes it trivial to express what used to require 10-15+ lines in 1-3 lines. Makes this bit from the OP shine: "Bill Joy ... was often comparing [Oak/Java] to more complicated and elegant languages like Python and Beta. He would often go on at length about how great [Oak/Java] would be if he could only add closures and continuations and parameterized types." I'm sure they faced tradeoffs and Java's industry story is near unmatched so it's hard to argue they made categorically wrong tradeoffs, but imagine an alternate universe in which lambdas/closures and a few other features tamed verbosity and enabled python-comparable succinctness in Java back in the 90s.
- kitd 5y agoIIRC Java had green threads and coroutines in its initial implementations. Imagine if they had kept them. People would probably complain they're unnecessary bloat. Never got all the complaints about Java. It's a very versatile "good enough" language with a great ecosystem.
- vips7L 5y agoLambdas were Java 8 in 2014
- jaytaylor 5y agoThanks for the correction vips7L. The main idea I wanted to convey is that with every release, Java keeps evolving and improving in the expressiveness and usability departments.
- vips7L 5y agoI agree! It keeps getting better and better! I can’t wait to see what comes once they’re finally done working on Loom and Valhalla!
- jaytaylor 5y agoYes, between GraalVM and the other projects you mentioned, it's very exciting times on the technical engineering front at Oracle, especially for Java and the JVM. Getting performance increases for free (as in, no code changes required) by swapping JRE implementation is pretty schweet.