5 ms·

"Can Java Be Saved?" Hopefully not. :)

by vladev 17y ago

jacquesm 17y ago
Why hopefully not ? Java has it's uses. I'm no 'fan' of the platform, but like any other programming language you can write anything in it, it simply has a 'niche' where it is a good tool when properly applied.
- jrockway 17y ago
  And what is this niche?
  - jacquesm 17y ago
    Software written for large corporations with a medium to high turnover in their staff where quality of programmer is less a factor than long-term maintainability of the project is. As weird as it sounds, in that world java's lack of 'neat constructs' and tendency to solve things using 'boilerplate' is actually an asset, for the same reason that COBOL used to be an asset. I've inherited a bunch of java code about 10 months ago now, so I've been more or less forced to come to terms with it, and even if I can't get over how tremendously kludgy it feels I would have a hard time getting this kind of performance out of other platforms on the exact same hardware. Call it grudging admiration, I personally would have never thought that you could do this and more with Java before being forced to get in to it. There isn't a day though that I don't curse the language designers for making me go the long way around on just about anything that I could do in half the code (or less) in pretty much any other language that I have under my belt with the exception of assembler. At this point in time, my main gripes with java are verbosity and an absolutely terribly kludgy feel to the interface with other parts of the library, it feels like wearing a straightjacket. And it is exactly for that reason why enterprise types much really love it, my 'creativity' is limited to the point where anybody else facing the same problem would probably write more or less the same code. Since joining this project I've basically just been busy condensing code and removing 1000's of lines of boilerplate by replacing it with the appropriate abstractions. And by doing that I'm doing two things, I'm making the work marginally more interesting, secondly the other guy working on the project is slowly starting to see that cut&paste is not the way to go. But that's my 'toolmakers' hat that I'm wearing, I'm pretty sure the that people that lead this project would rather have me work on 'features' because that is more productive in their eyes, my kind of 'productivity' will start paying off in the longer term. Time will tell how it is all goes, for now my conclusion is that it is probably not the language that is 100% at fault, it is likely in large part attributable to the people that use it and promote it. And it will be a long time before I will be one of them, if ever. If you've ever used UCSD-P with the dreaded P-code then you know roughly what I feel like about this job :)

"Can Java Be Saved?" Hopefully not. :)

by vladev 17y ago

"Can Java Be Saved?" Hopefully not. :)

Why hopefully not ? Java has it's uses. I'm no 'fan' of the platform, but like any other programming language you can write anything in it, it simply has a 'niche' where it is a good tool when properly applied.

jrockway 17y ago
And what is this niche?
- jacquesm 17y ago
  Software written for large corporations with a medium to high turnover in their staff where quality of programmer is less a factor than long-term maintainability of the project is. As weird as it sounds, in that world java's lack of 'neat constructs' and tendency to solve things using 'boilerplate' is actually an asset, for the same reason that COBOL used to be an asset. I've inherited a bunch of java code about 10 months ago now, so I've been more or less forced to come to terms with it, and even if I can't get over how tremendously kludgy it feels I would have a hard time getting this kind of performance out of other platforms on the exact same hardware. Call it grudging admiration, I personally would have never thought that you could do this and more with Java before being forced to get in to it. There isn't a day though that I don't curse the language designers for making me go the long way around on just about anything that I could do in half the code (or less) in pretty much any other language that I have under my belt with the exception of assembler. At this point in time, my main gripes with java are verbosity and an absolutely terribly kludgy feel to the interface with other parts of the library, it feels like wearing a straightjacket. And it is exactly for that reason why enterprise types much really love it, my 'creativity' is limited to the point where anybody else facing the same problem would probably write more or less the same code. Since joining this project I've basically just been busy condensing code and removing 1000's of lines of boilerplate by replacing it with the appropriate abstractions. And by doing that I'm doing two things, I'm making the work marginally more interesting, secondly the other guy working on the project is slowly starting to see that cut&paste is not the way to go. But that's my 'toolmakers' hat that I'm wearing, I'm pretty sure the that people that lead this project would rather have me work on 'features' because that is more productive in their eyes, my kind of 'productivity' will start paying off in the longer term. Time will tell how it is all goes, for now my conclusion is that it is probably not the language that is 100% at fault, it is likely in large part attributable to the people that use it and promote it. And it will be a long time before I will be one of them, if ever. If you've ever used UCSD-P with the dreaded P-code then you know roughly what I feel like about this job :)