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Yes from a pure functional perspective, it's really down to null handling at this point. But kotlin has a lot of nice syntactic sugar still. Same with Groovy.

by zmmmmm 3y ago

Tainnor 3y ago
> it's really down to null handling at this point. and reified generics, if you care about that sort of thing. Plus immutability/final by default, the stdlib being a joy to use, etc.
pjmlp 3y ago
We all know how Groovy ended. Being syntax sugar isn't enough to keep a language going.
- brabel 3y ago
  What do you mean, how Groovy ended? It's still going strong with regular releases and continues to keep up with new Java features! It's a pretty nice language if you don't mind dynamic typing, which has its uses.
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    No one cares it exists, beyond Gradle scripts, Gradle saved the language to join fate with Beanshell, jTcl, jython,.... Long are the days where it was proposed to have parity alongside Java in Java EE, and Spring used to talk about it as it does with Kotlin nowadays. Or when Grails was a common subject of talk proposals at German JUG meetings.
    - brabel 3y ago
      Well I care a lot that it exists. And many other people I know do as well. Just because you don't seem to like it, you shouldn't imagine everyone else is like you. Maybe Grails is no longer used as much (like Rails itself), but Groovy found other usages since then, like https://spockframework.org/ https://spockframework.org/ and Jenkins pipelines (https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/syntax/ https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/syntax/). It's not going anywhere, and I see no reason for anyone to be upset about it.
      - pjmlp 3y ago
        No one is upset, only a reality check how guest languages eventually fade away as the underlying platform and the related "system" language evolved. I never saw Spock being used outside Grails projects, and Jenkins seems to become less and less relevant in modern cloud pipelines.
        fulafel 3y ago
        There are many solid seeming ones that don't show those signs: Elixir, TypeScript, Clojure, C++, Kotlin etc. I think enumerating short lived languages is not representative since programming languages generally have very high share of short-lived/abandoned ones. But it's not necessarily a "don't go there" sign that there's a shorter average lifespan. System languages can't really go away unless the whole platform can and are doomed to be a bit clunky. Picking a language from the category that might only have a 15-year heyday is fine for a lot of apps if it's otherwise better than the system language.
        brabel 3y ago
        You should go out more. Spock is really popular, and Jenkins is still extremely relevant, quite ridiculous to say otherwise.
        zmmmmm 3y ago
        > guest languages eventually fade away I actually think Groovy sits a bit different to other JVM languages in this respect, because it never was at its core, pitched as an alternative to Java (for a brief moment it was considered in that light, but that was mainly because Java itself became so stagnated). They aren't competing to be the same thing the way other JVM languages are - Groovy is trying to be a really good scripting language and Java is trying to be a really good application language. Similar to how Clojure will probably never be popular but it will probably also never go away.

Yes from a pure functional perspective, it's really down to null handling at this point. But kotlin has a lot of nice syntactic sugar still. Same with Groovy.

by zmmmmm 3y ago

Yes from a pure functional perspective, it's really down to null handling at this point. But kotlin has a lot of nice syntactic sugar still. Same with Groovy.

Tainnor 3y ago

> it's really down to null handling at this point. and reified generics, if you care about that sort of thing. Plus immutability/final by default, the stdlib being a joy to use, etc.

pjmlp 3y ago

We all know how Groovy ended. Being syntax sugar isn't enough to keep a language going.

brabel 3y ago
What do you mean, how Groovy ended? It's still going strong with regular releases and continues to keep up with new Java features! It's a pretty nice language if you don't mind dynamic typing, which has its uses.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  No one cares it exists, beyond Gradle scripts, Gradle saved the language to join fate with Beanshell, jTcl, jython,.... Long are the days where it was proposed to have parity alongside Java in Java EE, and Spring used to talk about it as it does with Kotlin nowadays. Or when Grails was a common subject of talk proposals at German JUG meetings.
  - brabel 3y ago
    Well I care a lot that it exists. And many other people I know do as well. Just because you don't seem to like it, you shouldn't imagine everyone else is like you. Maybe Grails is no longer used as much (like Rails itself), but Groovy found other usages since then, like https://spockframework.org/ https://spockframework.org/ and Jenkins pipelines (https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/syntax/ https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/syntax/). It's not going anywhere, and I see no reason for anyone to be upset about it.
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      No one is upset, only a reality check how guest languages eventually fade away as the underlying platform and the related "system" language evolved. I never saw Spock being used outside Grails projects, and Jenkins seems to become less and less relevant in modern cloud pipelines.
      - fulafel 3y ago
        There are many solid seeming ones that don't show those signs: Elixir, TypeScript, Clojure, C++, Kotlin etc. I think enumerating short lived languages is not representative since programming languages generally have very high share of short-lived/abandoned ones. But it's not necessarily a "don't go there" sign that there's a shorter average lifespan. System languages can't really go away unless the whole platform can and are doomed to be a bit clunky. Picking a language from the category that might only have a 15-year heyday is fine for a lot of apps if it's otherwise better than the system language.
      - brabel 3y ago
        You should go out more. Spock is really popular, and Jenkins is still extremely relevant, quite ridiculous to say otherwise.
      - zmmmmm 3y ago
        > guest languages eventually fade away I actually think Groovy sits a bit different to other JVM languages in this respect, because it never was at its core, pitched as an alternative to Java (for a brief moment it was considered in that light, but that was mainly because Java itself became so stagnated). They aren't competing to be the same thing the way other JVM languages are - Groovy is trying to be a really good scripting language and Java is trying to be a really good application language. Similar to how Clojure will probably never be popular but it will probably also never go away.