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> There are many types of large scale systems where I would only code it using the JVM, everything else is a nightmare. I’ve seen more than one lifetime’s wort

> There are many types of large scale systems where I would only code it using the JVM, everything else is a nightmare. I’ve seen more than one lifetime’s worth of nightmare code written in Java. I agree with the GP commenter - I don’t think the problem is Java (the language) so much as the culture surrounding it. The Java programmers I’ve worked with (all smart people) seem addicted to solving all problems my writing more Java. More interfaces (most of which just have a single implementor). More classes. More files. More abstractions. You pay a massive tax for that any time you edit your software - since inevitably you're going to end up unpicking hundreds of lines of code that could have been two if statements. I’ve never seen this abstraction vomit disease be quite this bad in software written in other languages. You can find a bit of it in C#, C++, go and Python. But not as bad as Java. In typescript and rust, most of the code I work with focuses a lot more on directly solving the actual problem at hand. I don’t think the problem is the language itself. Java is a fine language. But for some reason, it’s become a magnet for a certain kind of developer that I frankly never want to work with. Developers who would never use 5 lines of code when 100 would do. Developers who abstract first and understand the problem they’re solving later. It’s disgusting.

kaba0 3y ago
> I’ve never seen this abstraction vomit disease be quite this bad in software written in other languages. You can find a bit of it in C#, C++, go and Python. But not as bad as Java That’s just your personal experience with these languages. I would even go as far to say that there is some survivorship bias — certain projects might have survived in java that collapsed under its own weight in some other platform, making the “complex nightmare projects” overrepresented in java, even though it is due to a positive thing.
- josephg 3y ago
  Sure. Unless you have data, we’re only talking about our personal experience. But there’s plenty of large, apparently healthy, projects written in other languages. The Linux kernel (C). Chrome (C++). Unreal engine (C++). Postgres. And so on. My claim (and criticism of the culture around java) is that I’ve seen a lot of large Java projects at medium to large companies which didn’t need to be large projects at all. And wouldn’t be if they were built in a different style. The claim that building verbosely is good is almost never justified with data, and always seems deeply suspect to me. My instincts often say “I could rewrite this monolith with 2 smart developers in 3 weeks”. After 30+ years writing software, I’ve learned to trust my instincts.

kaba0 3y ago

> I’ve never seen this abstraction vomit disease be quite this bad in software written in other languages. You can find a bit of it in C#, C++, go and Python. But not as bad as Java That’s just your personal experience with these languages. I would even go as far to say that there is some survivorship bias — certain projects might have survived in java that collapsed under its own weight in some other platform, making the “complex nightmare projects” overrepresented in java, even though it is due to a positive thing.

josephg 3y ago
Sure. Unless you have data, we’re only talking about our personal experience. But there’s plenty of large, apparently healthy, projects written in other languages. The Linux kernel (C). Chrome (C++). Unreal engine (C++). Postgres. And so on. My claim (and criticism of the culture around java) is that I’ve seen a lot of large Java projects at medium to large companies which didn’t need to be large projects at all. And wouldn’t be if they were built in a different style. The claim that building verbosely is good is almost never justified with data, and always seems deeply suspect to me. My instincts often say “I could rewrite this monolith with 2 smart developers in 3 weeks”. After 30+ years writing software, I’ve learned to trust my instincts.