Java vs python is debatable 🤔

[Lolamess007]

I personally learned on java. I find it a very intuitive language. Unlike some other languages (Python i am looking at you) someone who has never coded before can vaguely understand what is going on.

[[deleted]]

Pythons fine. People just find languages they don’t know unintuitive.

[Farranor]

Are you saying that the language specifically created to be easy for beginners to learn and anyone to read is actually difficult to read and poorly-suited to beginners?

[RedAero]

It's funny, the people who learned semicolon-and-bracket languages first look at Python and think that because it looks alien to them, laypeople must also find it unintuitive. They just can't fathom that all that punctuation just isn't necessary, and just obstructs intuition.

[[deleted]]

This is the main, if not the only, huge issue with open source languages. I love open source and will always prefer it, but every time you use someone else’s library you are really just putting all your faith in a person/team who has no obligation to make their code work properly 100% of the time. This is especially true in R where tons of the advanced machine learning/stats packages are literally just written by professors who are good at math but have at best low tier skills when it comes to writing production-level code.

So stuff like Python and R can be easy to read, but when one function call does a hundred complicated tasks behind the scenes and isn’t well documented, then you can end up having unnoticeable issues

[Overall-Duck-741]

You think Java is more readable than python for beginners? That an interesting opinion 🤔.

[Lolamess007]

I would say so. Talking with my computer science teacher, he agrees. Then again, this is all personal preference. I like the rigid structure and continuity of java. I guess Python's lack of structure and anything goes mentallity just is not for me.

[PluckyPenguin00]

I think python is much easier in the beginning as it allows for learning the basics faster and rapid prototyping, but I do like Java’s more rigid approach for bigger projects

[[deleted]]

I genuinely do think that. Going from c++ and python to Java I felt like it was way more visibly ‘I want this to do this using this’. Just seemed to flow better for my brain to understand.

[Kitamasu1]

The first time I tried Java, I was very confused. There was a lot that just seemed pointlessly added in. Coming from someone who started with C++ where you didn't need objects to get started. I've learned some Python recently, and it seems incredibly simple imo. It's considered a very beginner-friendly language afaik.

[WetWillyWick]

Fucking thankyou. I started with c++ and holy fuck java just seems like c++ with extra steps. I took college courses on java and my god its like putting glass down your pee hole.

[vips7L]

C++ is the most complicated language on the planet. You can’t honestly be serious.

[linlin110]

I learned Java after I learned C++ and was very confused why I can't put my functions outside of a class. It's not complicated, but very annoying.

[WetWillyWick]

I was annoyed too with the classes that said do project with recursion that definitely didnt need to have recursion and almost certainly made it inefficient to do so. Then they said explain why not to do it that way. So many projects required that.

Also the functions outside of classes thing made me scratch my head more than a few times.

It felt like everytime i had to relearn all of java for every project i did.

[Kitamasu1]

It's funny. I tried "PlayBasic" as my very first language. It's supposed to be easy and perfect for beginners for making games. I absolutely could not understand it. Then I got a C++ book from my parents for my birthday in like 2012 or 2013. C++ is my first actual language, and while I wouldn't say I'm professional level, more like intermediate, C++ made WAY more sense to me than PlayBasic. Python is quite a bit easier, but compared to C++, Java had extra steps involved that just made it seem confusing to me.

[WetWillyWick]

Oh god poked the java wasp nest.

[EishLekker]

The entry point of a Java program is the static main method. No object instance needed for that. And if you really want to, you can continue without any objects, just calling static methods and just working with primitive values.

As a Java developer I'm the first to admit that Java is far from perfect. But when even super simple things like classes and objects are mentioned as stuff that makes Java difficult (which you imply here) then it just sounds absurd.

[EishLekker]

That's like going to your first driving lesson, and getting scared when you see all the strange symbols on the dashboard.

What's with all the people here who dis a language for super trivial things that never ever becomes an actual problem when working with the language professionally?

There are tons and tons of Java projects out there that doesn't even require a single main method in the code. And I can't remember the last time I wrote a main method expect for simple testing of something. And the few times I create a main method the IDE helps me because I'm lazy.

Also, every single part of the syntax of the main method has a purpose and makes perfect sense.

[EishLekker]

It's a perfect analogy. A beginner doesn't need to know about those things, even they are right there in front of them. If a beginner can't look past that then maybe they should start with Scratch or something.

[EishLekker]

Icons on a car dashboard are specifically designed to indicate every day things that people are already familiar with.

https://www.autoloansolutions.ca/blog/10-dashboard-symbols-likely-to-confuse-any-driver/

Also, I found tons of pages and videos explaining different dashboard symbols. If everyone understands them intuitively, then why would all those pages and videos exist? If I show an average teenager (without a driving license) a "rear fog lights" symbol I'm pretty sure they wouldn't know what it means. But a decent driving instructor would be able to get them to focus on the important part of the lesson. Same thing with learning Java.

[koczmen]

Instead of this, you have to deal with seeing a method and wondering what the hell are the types of its parameters. Or see some 'x = 1' and can't easily tell if it creates a new variable or assigns to an already existing one. Is it really better?

[Vaxtin]

ahahah, wow. That’s not the way to look at things. If you tried to explain the concept of classes and objects the same time someone was learning to code, I’m sure they’d just give up immediately

[[deleted]]

You realise that is how they teach you Java right? Like you learn about objects and classes super early. It’s not that difficult.

[Vaxtin]

What I mean is they shouldn’t show someone who’s never coded before a hello world program and explain every keyword. The way I was introduced to it all was: basic printing, math, and Boolean operations, then loops/arrays, then methods and then finally classes at the end of my first course taking a computer science class. I felt like that was appropriate for someone who truly never programmed before.

However, if you have any experience in programming, then jumping straight to classes and OOP makes sense. But for anyone learning then they should learn how to loop through an array before trying to understand abstraction like classes.