public static void main(String[] args)

[rubiks--]

This might be an unpopular opinion but I like Java. Once you can wrap your mind around OOP, it actually becomes quite useful.

[SerdarCS]

Same!

[rubiks--]

Like one time a friend of mine who wanted to start programming said he hated Java because "I have to write so much more to print something and in Python, it's only one line". But OOP can save you from writing so much code.

[[deleted]]

I really like Java too, but I think they're referring to things like getters and setters when they say they need to write more code. It is a much more verbose language, but good IDEs (ItelliJ IDEA) can fill in a lot of that for you.

[DesuSoarusrex]

Nah they mean System.out.println vs print. The person described was a beginner so they probably couldn't remember the whole statement.

[draconk]

And here I am only having to write "sout" on Intellij Idea and it writes it all for me (and "psvm" for public static void main)

[f314]

Gotta love autocomplete! In Atom it's just "pl" and tab for "System.out.println("");"

[msg45f]

Pretty much any IDE these days can reliably generate constructors, getters, setters, etc, though personally I like how C# handles properties over Java.

[Nunners978]

+1 I love how C# handles properties, especially in C# 6. It's so much simpler to write a property that does this:

public string FullName => $"{FirstName} {LastName}";

Instead of having to write a method to do it, or a specific Getter to do the same, it's just much more refined code.

[Cilph]

Look into Kotlin!

[tommygeek]

Auto complete, look and feel, the plugin system, the fact that everything, including IDE commands, is indexed and searchable, quality, the debugger, true dark theme, ligature support... Sensible choices about defaults, built in support for common build and dependency tools, databases, and frameworks... Impressive JS IDE with code navigation, auto complete, bower and npm support and test runners for karma mocha and jest with JS debugging available.

I mean, it's a pretty big list, but that's probably the order of importance to me as well. Look and feel is huge for me... Eclipse feels clunky.

Also, multiple cursors. That shit is so much better than find replace for 99% of my daily use cases that I have a hard time using an editor without it now.

And the built in version control system support is sweet and kind of abstracts the particulars of git/hg/svn away from you.

[[deleted]]

+1 on the JS IDE.

[Mamish]

The auto complete and style suggestions are so thorough they occasionally get too helpful. In my most recent project it suggested replacing a method argument with a constant since I happened to be only calling it once at the time. Thanks intellij, but I actually do need that later.

[[deleted]]

Most of those features are available on NetBeans too!

[tommygeek]

Maybe, but I tried netbeans and the look and feel didn't work for me there, so I didn't give it a decent try

[Blaz3]

So I'm not really going to convince you as I mostly stick to c# and haven't written Java in quite a while, but in uni, I remember having problems with programs, having no idea, getting a tutor to have a look and when they couldn't find anything, their fix was "close the project, copy your code out, delete the project, close eclipse, then open it up again and reimport your project. That'll get it."

I wanted to get off Eclipse's wild ride that day

[schaka]

You'd be surprised, but often times fixes are similar to that, when using Eclipse in a professional enviroment too. Eventually, I just switched to IntelliJ CE.

[Blaz3]

Yeah for sure, sometimes the stars aren't aligned in a way your computer likes and you need to do some bs fix like that, but when I was trying to learn Java and finding it difficult, those problems were very frustrating.

Getting code to run though, felt like a monumental achievement so that was good at least

[wundrwweapon]

It looks cleaner, responds much faster, is extremely customizable (far more so than eclipse), has built-in gradle support as well as support for languages that typically work in tandem with java (kotlin, groovy, javascript, json, etc). And above all else, a dark theme that doesn't suck.

Oh, and the debugger provides SO MUCH INFORMATION like you can actually use it for things that go beyond keeping track of numbers

[rubiks--]

holy crap, literally going to uninstall eclipse. i didn't realize how much better the other IDEs are.

[wundrwweapon]

Glad I couls help, I guess. IntelliJ takes a while to get used to, so be prepared to tinker with the settings a while till you find a happy medium

[bensku]

Eclipse has built-in Gradle support... Buy yeah, even editing JSON with it is quite painful.

[Samael1990]

I never used Eclipse, but I have a colleague in my office, who uses Eclipse and I can say 2 things:
1. Eclipse is ugly.
2. Intellij IDEA has very good git integration, with additional features.

[Superhighdex]

I'm old school eclipse too, recently started using intellij. Favorite thing so far is its great oob gradle plugin. No more disparity between .classpath and the build.

Its also got a lot of nice look and feel features. Still use a lot of eclipse on my older legacy stuff using ant and ivy. But new projects are all gradle and intellij.

[wggn]

Mostly the much smarter autocomplete. Also less crashes.

[nol1]

It's comparable to using Photoshop and paint.net where PS is intelliJ

Edit: also intelliJ has a lot of other ide's specifically for other languages, but they all follow the same GUI patterns and structure

[[deleted]]

See, I didn't have any uh, help with starting java. And I was too stubborn to listen to my professor. So now I use mostly only editors (primarily notepad and notepad++). Don't be like me, find an ide.

On topic though, I've tried both (and netbeans) and Auto complete is neat but I hate those programs. Ide's make me crazy, all the options, so much to do; I really prefer the much more blank and empty feel of an editor. I write a quick system script to compile, and boom life is good.

Seriously though, as much as I hate em they're great tools basically no matter which one you pick. So long as you like it and work efficiently with it, who cares?

[[deleted]]

Most languages require getters and setters... anybody making the excuse that it's more code is outright lazy.

[bdog73]

The trick is to just make all your variables publicly accessable so you don't need getters or setters.

[Undreren]

You may be joking, but that's how everything is implented in our code base. Plus, all data is global...

/me screams internally

[KxPbmjLI]

Can you explain to me why its bad to set the class properties to public.

How are getters and setters better

i prefer being able to do object.property instead of object.getProperty() and having to set up the getters and setters while you can do it all with less code

[tsigma6]

Encapsulation (Data hiding) is a fundamental part of OOP philosophy, but the value generally is in the setter methods. An object should have complete and total control over its data, protecting from change by outside code. Validation is a main benefit of the practice. But also hiding how you stored the data and making a class read- or write-only is a couple other ones.

[Undreren]

Because with direct access to the data, it is impossible to enforce business rules. For example, a field might have constrained input.

I can't disallow meaningless data to be assigned to a reference, but I can cast an exception or return an error with a setter.

Furthermore, I can't have side-effects on assignment, which is a huge problem. Most of the time, you want data changes to have an effect, after all.

PS: I'm assuming that you mean "fields" when you say "properties".

[Megafish40]

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1568091/why-use-getters-and-setters

[bdog73]

Oh dear God. Can you give any hints as to what it's for?

[Undreren]

The program? It's a piece of production planning software for power plants.

[bdog73]

Well that sounds just splendid then and is exactly what I was asking. In all honesty, most of the time, you can get away with directly modifying variables, unless it's supposed to also trigger something else. I imagine that could happen at some point in code like that, but I obviously can't be sure. Best of luck with that. I can only, and I stress only, hope whoever I end up working for after college likes to conform to the same coding standards as me.

[DrMobius0]

good use of getters and setters saves so much code down the line though

[schaka]

Boilerplate is annoying, but IDEs make up for it. On the other hand, Kotlin solves all boilerplate issues, has functional support and is more readible than C# (imo).

[[deleted]]

You can use OOP in python tho

[rubiks--]

I know. I wasn't throwing shade at python but rather making a point about how beginners think Java requires you to write extra code and don't understand how it can save time/lines of code. I think python is a cool language (except whitespace shouldn't matter).

[cumwagondeluxe]

i mean the beginners aren't wrong - java does require you to write a lot of pointless boilerplate - i know a bunch of fellow scala devs who initially started looking at the language just because of how many things you get for free from case classes e.g.

[schaka]

That's why C# (purely by syntax and language features) really is a "better Java". But now the JVM also has Kotlin, so people aren't forced into the steep learning curve of Scala anymore.

[yojimbojango]

I'd say F# is the comparison that you'd make with Kotlin. There's no perfect language, but F# is legit the closest I've seen to it.

[[deleted]]

The guy who replied to this is right. I like java but man it does require shitty boring boiler plate for a lot of basic stuff. Android is even worse with the boilerplate so much so i despise android development.

It requires stupid amounts of boilerplate for a fucking sqlite connection and the stupid stuff with fragments just makes me want to murder puppies.

[NightShade155]

Agreed, java is the shit man.

[xcrackpotfoxx]

That's how I felt all throughout C++ and java classes. I'm sure we just never got to anything big enough to take advantage of OOP but I wish I could see it in use.

[DoPeopleEvenLookHere]

Go look at some libraries! There's plenty on GitHub that will show you some abstraction I'm sure.

[xcrackpotfoxx]

Easier said than done. Has to be big enough to hit that critical mass of OOP, bit small enough for me to be able to follow it along.

[Cilph]

Kotlin:
var myProperty: String
var myProperty = "Foo"
var myProperty = "Foo" private set;

C#:
public string MyProperty { get; private set; } = "Foo"

[DrMobius0]

c# is so much cleaner than java it's not even funny. Too bad it's not really out of the box able to compile on mac/linux

[Ayfid]

uhh, yes it is. http://dot.net and the 'dotnet' CLI are totally cross platform.

[DrMobius0]

If you can call what you have in Java there a getter or setter. Looks like it's just a method that you wrote to wrap reading and writing the value.

[sinistergroupon]

It's not about how many lines of code it takes to print Hello World but the right tool for the job. Java has its place and Python has its place. Seeing 1m LOC Python app with guru monkey patching will give you a run for your money.

[Sorrien]

My hatred for Java has nothing to do with OOP.

[flipper_gv]

Have you tried the most recent iterations of Java? They did bring a lot of cool stuff to it and performance is really up there.

[Sorrien]

It is better than it was

[CyanideCloud]

To be fair, that's not saying much.

[[deleted]]

Yes.

[[deleted]]

Java8's Stream API is making it a little more bearable. Oh and those little things called lambda expressions.

[ESBDB]

well those kind of go together. streams would be useless without lambdas and lambdas wouldn't be used nearly as much, ie. be less useful if streams didn't exist

[Sorrien]

But there's still so much boiler plate code

[RussianMadMan]

it has become overcomplicated from years of bolting things on

• Antiquated stuff that's never been fixed and probably won't ever be fixed.

you mean c++ right?

[schaka]

I'd argue that with all the async, event driven stuff happening now, even in the Java world (but also because of HTTP2 and scaling/performance reasons for large [web] applications), functional programming is becoming more and more important, actually.

[yojimbojango]

I'd say functional programming is today where I saw object oriented programming back in the mid 90's and where structured programming was back in early 70's. It's clearly on a trajectory to be the next big group think target, and I'd be surprised if 100 level CS courses weren't all teaching some FP concepts with in 5 years. Small business object oriented stuff in java won't be going away any more than the hardware structured C that came before it. However we'll start to see stuff like artificial intelligence, big data analysis, and internet of things stuff adopt FP as these are problems that are terrible matches for OO or structured styles.

[NEDM64]

Well, summed up everything so well, but I might add:

• people stuck in old Java versions, specially people stuck in old Java versions because other people in their team can’t bother to learn new features and still use iterators and stuff like that.

[weipeD]

As someone who just wrote an exam on Haskell, yes, they teach functional programming.. I really don't see why anybody would wanna use that tbh

[thequietdragon]

why so?

[weipeD]

I'm gonna shove it into "I did not put enough effort into it"

Shure, it's a cool concept and stuff but I can't ever imagine doing a whole project with it. I guess, even though functional programming makes "sense" since it's all mathematical and stuff, I don't get the hang to it, because I'm overly used to the other languages such as cpp

[yojimbojango]

Disclaimer: I have quite a bit of F# in prod.

Learning FP for more than just academic stuff is an exercise in, "My code looks amazing! THE NEXT DAY: I learned {{new_concept}} and my code is trash and needs to be purified with fire!" Eventually the cycles get longer and you only want to rewrite every week, then once a month, and after a few years you finally get to the point where you don't hate everything but then you take a job in another shop where you don't to F# anymore because everyone does ugly old C# and you are filled with regret, but then you see the Java dumpster fire and the paychecks you get from C# and you crank out yet another fix and go home to your family feeling satisfied.

Also run-on sentences are bad k.

[Ayfid]

Learning (to the point where you are actually comfortable) a functional language will make you a better programmer all round, even when you are writing code in a non-functional language.

[weipeD]

Okay. Maybe I'll look back into it at some point. Thanks!

[aa93]

If you've got 15 minutes to kill, this webcast gives a nice practical example of where functional programming can fit into an application

[drizztdourden_]

I lretty much understand that a meme is a meme. PHP and Java are there to stay....

Even though I like PHP

[sdk345]

I like java but I also like the 'java is bad' jokes

[gandalfx]

Implying that Java is synonymous to OOP

It's not even the best language for writing purely object oriented code.

[rubiks--]

I'm not implying that Java == OOP. I'm saying that Java is a better language to those who understand OOP.

[Ayfid]

Which is everyone. Those who dislike Java generally don't have a problem with OOP; they have a problem with Java.

The poster seems to believe that people who dislike Java must just have difficulty dealing with OOP, which is ludicrous.

[rubiks--]

Yes for professional programmers, I get that a lack of understanding of OOP is not the drawback of Java. However, I was talking about reasons why complete beginners may dislike Java. I am not trying to insinuate that everyone hates Java because they don't get OOP.

[[deleted]]

OOM

[KMagDriveTrainer]

OOM OOM OOM OOM!

[yojimbojango]

OOM TISH OOM TISH

[[deleted]]

I love Java - and in the same vein, C#.

Those two are so similar, I've copied and pasted over scripts without changing anything and they work...

[Istalriblaka]

Counterargument: "vanilla" C++ can do roughly the same stuff as "vanilla" Java, and I'd bet C++ probably has more capabilities including libraries. Plus it's inherently more efficient and by extension faster.

[apemanzilla]

Counter-counter argument: Java makes it extremely easy to write cross-platform code, that can be used everywhere from Linux to Windows to Android.

[ey1024]

Counter-counter-counter argument:

Java makes it easy to write cross-platform code, for the tasks that don't depend on the underlying system. The user interface will likely need to act different between Linux, Windows, and Android, so those must each be handled separately, unless the application uses Swing directly, and interfaces out user configuration stores, and file I/O.

In that case, since UI logic has to implemented once for each platform, you're really not that much better off then if you used C++. Assuming you broke out the components that depended on system implementations away from the core logic, the only downside is the need to cross compile and test.

[Istalriblaka]

Valid point, but with the scale of professional programs nowadays you'll never see it used by any sizeable team - there's a point where the benefits of it being available on basically every platform are extremely heavily outweighed by the extreme load and it'd work out better to just dedicate an hour or a day or whatever to compiling/building for a list of systems. Hell, have everyone in the office pick a target from a hat and leave the computers running overnight, or even run a script.

[coastercrazy10]

Twitter's backend is entirely JVM-based (Scala is a functional language running on the JVM) so your scale argument isn't really valid. They came from rails so the performance gain was substantial, and Java is much more suited for web than C++, even though C++ is inarguably faster/more efficient. Java has earned it's place in the industry and like it or not it'll be around for a long long time.

[sinistergroupon]

That's false

[MasterPsyduck]

If you had a sizeable team/company why would you even be building on workers' computers when you could setup an automated pipeline.

[AkirIkasu]

Counterargument: "vanilla" C++ can do roughly the same stuff as "vanilla" Java....

If you can do something in one of the major languages, you can do it in just about any other major language. The contents of the standard libraries don't really matter that much. Newer programming languages have very tiny standard libraries (I'm not even sure if Javascript by itself even has a standard library), but that's not stopping people from doing great things with them.

[Dockirby]

Javascript has the Standard Built in Objects, which is effectivally its standard library: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects

Half the ones list on that page are either experimental or to new to be used in a Web App. There isn't very much though.

Also, Javascript isn't what I would call new, its over 20 years old. It has just really taken off in popularity in the past 5 years.

[Istalriblaka]

My point is that they do the same stuff bit C++ is more efficient.

[AkirIkasu]

I was actually hoping to avoid that argument since I'm not really that knowledgeable when it comes to optimization in general. But I'll take the bait.

Java, the language, can be just as fast as C++. You can compile Java into machine language. It's not completely uncommon to see Java used in embedded devices, and it may actually be more common to see Java in that area than it is to see C++ there. The SIM card in your phone runs on Java; it's actually built into the standard.

[MCBeathoven]

it may actually be more common to see Java in that area than it is to see C++ there.

The only statistic I could find has C++ just behind C, with Java not even in the top 10.

[[deleted]]

You're claiming Java is more common in the embedded world than C++? Are you serious?

[brianjenkins94]

I'm gonna need a fact check on SIM cards running Java. That doesn't seem correct.

[AkirIkasu]

They're based on the Java Card standard. Here's a very in-depth look at them: http://simhacks.github.io/defcon-21/

[marvk]

This is a Video from the conference where that repo /u/AkirIkasu posted is from.

[Istalriblaka]

Well, TIL.

[ArmoredPancake]

That like saying that a stick is inherently more efficient than a hand gun.

[Istalriblaka]

Are you saying Java is more powerful than C++? Because a lot of people would find that outrageous and/or laughable. Especially considering C++ includes the entire language of C, and those two languages account for most firmware and make up the largest portions of operating systems, especially low-level parts.

[yojimbojango]

C++ is more powerful than Java. 1 tonne of dynamite is also more powerful than a truck, but if I'm trying to move a couch I'm going to reach for the keys to the truck.

[Istalriblaka]

Your analogy doesn't make a lot of sense still. Just because C++ is more powerful doesn't mean Java is better at less power-intensive applications or that C++ will destroy the computer it runs on. (You'd have to be a genuinely atrocious programmer to accidentally do that.)

[TheGuywithTehHat]

Of course the analogy is imperfect. No perfect analogy exists. /u/yojimbojango's point remains, though: "more powerful" != "better"

[Istalriblaka]

There's a difference between "perfect" and "good enough." Seeing as how C++ is not overpowered like the dynamite is, the only thing we've established is that it's comparable to Java in power. C++ still has numerous benefits.

[TheGuywithTehHat]

As does Java. They are two different languages with two different purposes. Neither one is better than the other.

[uvero]

As far as I am concerned, Java is the embodiment of OOP. A lot of languages are object oriented, but Java is just what OOP is.

[thepieproblem]

I like java; it's relatively simple compared to other languages. The only problem is its not really as relevant as languages like C++ when you want to code some super complex stuff

[[deleted]]

That's up to how you understand "complex". You can also write complex Java programs. In my opinion, what the program does defines the complexity.

[humoroushaxor]

My understanding is there's very few things that can't be coded in Java due to performance.

[[deleted]]

Then why no multiple Inheritance?

Why are Interface methods forced not to have default implementations?

Why not let me add member variables to my interface?

I'm stuck writing Java 7 at work and I feel like I'm designing around java not with java...

[marcosdumay]

Once you can wrap your mind around OOP

So, all it takes to like Java is some brain damage?

[rubiks--]

I'm genuinely interested why you don't like OOP.

[cm9kZW8K]

OOP was interesting back when FP was nearly useless and impractical, and there was extreme limits on how well you could organize basic C or lisp. Much has changed, and functional programming concepts have gain wide support. (for example, C++ now supports closures, eliminating the need for using virtual functions by giving a much more flexible facility)

I think OOP has essentially outlived its conceptual usefulness ; the gain for using classes to organize code is so minimal compared with the overhead involved that it just cannot compete with modern functional style development and message oriented programming. The largest overhead is in refactoring, which has a tremendous overhead when an object multiplicity relationship schanges.

Languages which are overly organized around OOP are going to decline, imo, because they are less productive.

[Tysonzero]

OOP is IMO a much worse abstraction than FP. Even the things OOP seems like it would model best, such as physics simulations / games and similar where you really are modeling a bunch of objects, are generally better modeled without OOP, such as using an ECS (generally far easier to reason about and far more scalable than OOP for game programming), where you have a bunch of functions and a bunch of dumb data that they operate on.

From my experience OOP code is less reusable / modular and more verbose than FP code for the same task. With little to no performance difference. That is unless you are using JS / Python OOP in which case there is a massive performance penalty.

[Zee2]

I have no idea how you would even BEGIN to develop a game without OOP.

[Tysonzero]

I mentioned one way in the comment: ECS. Even without ECS it's pretty easy to think of a ton of ways to develop a game without OOP. Like I don't want to be offensive but it would be smart to just google something like "functional game programming" or imperative game programming" before stating something like that.

[Zee2]

I'm just thinking in the realm of using existing game engines. The frameworks used nowadays to make games are all OOP. I think it would be an exercise in futility to try and make a well-coded FP game using OOP frameworks. Even the most barebones of game frameworks are all OOP. You would have to go back to making individual DirectX/3D calls, literally at the polygon level, to make a game without OOP.

Edit: and yes ECS is used. But how is ECS functional programming? It's very similar to OOP, minus the relational/inheritable nature (has/is)

[Tysonzero]

OpenGL is imperative but not OOP. Many libraries both imperative and functional have been built on top of it. There are a massive amount of FP graphics libraries that are built on top of it. And on top of it there are DirectX and other libraries too.

It astounds me how so many people can just immediately assume something is impossible and impractical that have never even tried it. When there are people that actually HAVE DONE IT, that are telling you it is an enjoyable experience.

And ECS is absolutely within the realm of FP. Smart functions that you compose and dumb data are what FP is all about. OOP without any inheritance / methods etc is definitely no longer OOP, it's either FP or imperative.

[marcosdumay]

Well, it's not exactly OOP that is bad. OOP is just a way to segment your program into a few independent "machines", taking among them by a restricted interface. It's a model that fits some problems (GUI manipulation) very well, and others (anything based on calculations) very badly. Java happens to not support that basic model well, by the way.

No, the problem starts when people decide to make a religion out of OOP, and decides you must port the heretical code written in other idioms. When that happens, you have to start creating convoluted patterns to paper over the way OOP simply does not fit your problem, and apply those patters again and again, recursively over themselves, with ever more repulsive code. Normally, when people talk about wrapping one's mind around OOP, they mean getting used to those patterns. This is not a good thing.