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I think it would somehow be very hard to get people excited about contributing to the effort to build a new, amazing piece of forum software... in Java. Don't

I think it would somehow be very hard to get people excited about contributing to the effort to build a new, amazing piece of forum software... in Java. Don't underestimate what effect Java 8 will have. Sure, closures are old by now, but JDK 8 combines them with streams, similar to those that have become popular in Scala and Haskell. You can write stuff like this, https://github.com/mikaelhg/lambda-demo/blob/master/src/main/java/lambda/LambdaDemo.java https://github.com/mikaelhg/lambda-demo/blob/master/src/main... without creating intermediate lists or whatever. Replace a call to a collection's stream method by parallelStream and subsequent operations such as map are parallelized. Java 8 is perhaps not `Haskell cool', but you'll be able to get it past management and still enjoy some of the functional programming fun. (Now, give me value structs and reified generics Oracle!)

prawks 14y ago
> you'll be able to get it past management and still enjoy some of the functional programming fun. I think a lot of technologies where the ability to convince management to use it is a feature are ones that don't get individual open-source contributors the most excited, unfortunately. Maybe I'm naive to Java's open-source community, but from the outside I don't envision it to be as active as Ruby's (at least outside of Android), even with Ruby no longer being "the cool thing".
- danieldk 14y ago
  Maybe I'm naive to Java's open-source community, but from the outside I don't envision it to be as active as Ruby's (at least outside of Android), even with Ruby no longer being "the cool thing". Actually, that was my view too. In my previous job, I had used C, C++, Prolog, and some Haskell for four years. My outside view was that the Java opensource ecosystem is boring. My current employer uses Java almost exclusively, and I have to admit being surprised how much high-quality open source libraries are available, packaged up for Maven. I still think that Java is so-so, but the open source ecosystem is quite strong, and there are really excellent IDEs (such as IntelliJ IDEA).
  - prawks 14y ago
    I'm glad to hear otherwise! I have a few friends that are Java nuts, so I'm glad they're not as nutty as I thought!
- woobar 14y ago
  > Maybe I'm naive to Java's open-source community, but from the outside I don't envision it to be as active as Ruby's Check out this slides: http://www.slideshare.net/blackducksoftware/open-source-by-the-numbers http://www.slideshare.net/blackducksoftware/open-source-by-t...
  - prawks 14y ago
    Like I mentioned, I know Java the language is active, but how much of that is server-side Java vs. Android (which I guess is a massive contributor).
    - danieldk 14y ago
      Some examples of Java-based non-Android open source projects that are very widely used: http://www.jboss.org/projects http://www.jboss.org/projects http://projects.apache.org/indexes/quick.html http://projects.apache.org/indexes/quick.html
jmcqk6 14y ago
Oh, am I missing something or is this just basically Java finally getting LINQ?

prawks 14y ago

> you'll be able to get it past management and still enjoy some of the functional programming fun. I think a lot of technologies where the ability to convince management to use it is a feature are ones that don't get individual open-source contributors the most excited, unfortunately. Maybe I'm naive to Java's open-source community, but from the outside I don't envision it to be as active as Ruby's (at least outside of Android), even with Ruby no longer being "the cool thing".

danieldk 14y ago
Maybe I'm naive to Java's open-source community, but from the outside I don't envision it to be as active as Ruby's (at least outside of Android), even with Ruby no longer being "the cool thing". Actually, that was my view too. In my previous job, I had used C, C++, Prolog, and some Haskell for four years. My outside view was that the Java opensource ecosystem is boring. My current employer uses Java almost exclusively, and I have to admit being surprised how much high-quality open source libraries are available, packaged up for Maven. I still think that Java is so-so, but the open source ecosystem is quite strong, and there are really excellent IDEs (such as IntelliJ IDEA).
- prawks 14y ago
  I'm glad to hear otherwise! I have a few friends that are Java nuts, so I'm glad they're not as nutty as I thought!
woobar 14y ago
> Maybe I'm naive to Java's open-source community, but from the outside I don't envision it to be as active as Ruby's Check out this slides: http://www.slideshare.net/blackducksoftware/open-source-by-the-numbers http://www.slideshare.net/blackducksoftware/open-source-by-t...
- prawks 14y ago
  Like I mentioned, I know Java the language is active, but how much of that is server-side Java vs. Android (which I guess is a massive contributor).
  - danieldk 14y ago
    Some examples of Java-based non-Android open source projects that are very widely used: http://www.jboss.org/projects http://www.jboss.org/projects http://projects.apache.org/indexes/quick.html http://projects.apache.org/indexes/quick.html

jmcqk6 14y ago

Oh, am I missing something or is this just basically Java finally getting LINQ?