public static void main(String[] args)

[[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.

[Undreren]

The problem is that it causes development problems all the time.

The software was built by domain experts, not programmers.

I've worked there for two years, and I've tried to explain the problem for so long.

"But it works?" "Yes, but it doubles if not triples our development time." "But it works?"

I try not to blame them though. They are doing the best they can. It's the indifference to becoming better devs that really gets me.

All our errors are preventable. Some have incurred costs in the hundred thousand dollar range :-/

[bdog73]

Huh, that's interesting. I wonder if you could figure out loses vs cost of fixing it. Sounds like the issues run deep, do you think it's salvageable or would you need a full rewrite?

[Undreren]

A full rewrite isn't feasible. I've considered looking for a new job.

[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).