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I don't get the Java hate. The stuff in Java is not there just to make your life miserable, it's a result of thousands of people spending millions of hours on c

by RyanZAG 14y ago

I don't get the Java hate. The stuff in Java is not there just to make your life miserable, it's a result of thousands of people spending millions of hours on complex problems finding that certain methods work well when your source code base becomes too large for simplistic methods. The fact is: Java works, and it works well. Ruby/Rails is getting there, as we see from larger and larger code bases being build on Ruby/Rail and needing more and more of the hated 'Java' features - because they work. Any language can be used for a small project and work very well - precious few can still continue to work well at scale. I've found a lot of the HN crowd to be biased in this area. I believe that comes from most of HN working in startups which means less legacy code, smaller code bases, and more focused products with less management bureaucracy and changes. A sizable part of HN is also younger and hasn't yet worked in an environment of sufficient scale to require Java's(c++, advanced RoR, etc) features. I could be way off here - but if you're knocking this kind of complexity and haven't worked on a massive project - it might simply be your frame of reference and you should stop knocking it.

runT1ME 14y ago
>it's a result of thousands of people spending millions of hours on complex problems finding that certain methods work well when your source code base becomes too large for simplistic methods. Sure. But how well does it work? I think it's obvious right now that the JVM is a fantastic piece of engineering, and java took us far, but that it's aging and inflexible. Here's my problem with java explained succinctly in anther thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939624 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939624
fleitz 14y ago
The whole point of rails is not to build massive projects. If you're building massive projects with thousands of classes on rails then you should be all means switch to J2EE.
- cglee 14y ago
  This needs to be repeated over and over. We see so many pundits pushing the "right" way to build Rails applications now. Rails was a reaction against large applications. The major use case is to build CRUDs in front of a db. If your application out grows Rails, it's not a condemnation about Rails, or your team, or an earlier choice. If you're Twitter or Facebook, don’t use Rails out of the box. For the rest of us who want to work on small applications, Rails is still beautiful. And when I say small, I mean applications around the complexity of a Basecamp or Github.
  - fleitz 14y ago
    Fully agree, the next boogey man against rails is performance which again is quite a silly argument when you have customers and servers cost $5 / month.
deleted 14y ago
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mark_l_watson 14y ago
I largely agree with you even though I have written a lot on the superiority in my opinion of (J)Ruby, Clojure, and Scala as JVM languages. The reason I agree with you is that last year while on a vacation without a computer I spent some time thinking about languages and made a guestimate that if I had stuck with Java and never spent any time learning new languages, then my productivity would have been a bit higher. However, and for me this is a large issue: I really enjoy learning new languages, and twisting around how I think about programming. I mostly retired in January except for helping some customers in emergencies, and for my own retirement projects I use Clojure exclusively. In retirement, I am damn glad I am not doing my passion projects in Java :-)

by RyanZAG 14y ago

runT1ME 14y ago

>it's a result of thousands of people spending millions of hours on complex problems finding that certain methods work well when your source code base becomes too large for simplistic methods. Sure. But how well does it work? I think it's obvious right now that the JVM is a fantastic piece of engineering, and java took us far, but that it's aging and inflexible. Here's my problem with java explained succinctly in anther thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939624 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939624

fleitz 14y ago

The whole point of rails is not to build massive projects. If you're building massive projects with thousands of classes on rails then you should be all means switch to J2EE.

cglee 14y ago
This needs to be repeated over and over. We see so many pundits pushing the "right" way to build Rails applications now. Rails was a reaction against large applications. The major use case is to build CRUDs in front of a db. If your application out grows Rails, it's not a condemnation about Rails, or your team, or an earlier choice. If you're Twitter or Facebook, don’t use Rails out of the box. For the rest of us who want to work on small applications, Rails is still beautiful. And when I say small, I mean applications around the complexity of a Basecamp or Github.
- fleitz 14y ago
  Fully agree, the next boogey man against rails is performance which again is quite a silly argument when you have customers and servers cost $5 / month.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

mark_l_watson 14y ago

I largely agree with you even though I have written a lot on the superiority in my opinion of (J)Ruby, Clojure, and Scala as JVM languages. The reason I agree with you is that last year while on a vacation without a computer I spent some time thinking about languages and made a guestimate that if I had stuck with Java and never spent any time learning new languages, then my productivity would have been a bit higher. However, and for me this is a large issue: I really enjoy learning new languages, and twisting around how I think about programming. I mostly retired in January except for helping some customers in emergencies, and for my own retirement projects I use Clojure exclusively. In retirement, I am damn glad I am not doing my passion projects in Java :-)