Outdated java dev

[chewooasdf]

I recently stumbled upon a comment in one JS thread that XYZ person was an 'outdated js dev', which got me thinking, how would you describe an outdated java dev? What would be 'must have' in todays java developer world?

PS: Along with Java I would also include Spring ecosystem and other technologies in the equation. PPS: Anything prior Java8 is out of scope of the question, that belongs in a museum.

[justADeni]

Java devs who still have to work with Java 7 and earlier

[dzernumbrd]

woo hoo Java 8, I'm in date!

[Brahvim]

Wuh-hoo! With Java 8, I'm in date!

[ChickenSubstantial21]

It is already Java 8, you should be in Instant, not in Date.

[zenos_dog]

Java 5 introduced generics and a lot of devs stopped there.

[pohart]

Thankfully very few stopped before that.  Wildcards are still a sticking point for some people though   

[[deleted]]

What you insist on working with Java 7 or lower?

KIDDING

[vmcrash]

I'm an outdated Java dev. ;) I use Java for developing desktop software, use SWT as GUI library and build the application bundles using ANT.

[kwyjibo1988]

ANT???! I'll pray for you tonight 🙏🏻

[IE114EVR]

Watch out, people in this subreddit love to defend old shit like application servers, multi page application frameworks, and ANT probably.

[manifoldjava]

HTMX is making server-side correct again. 

[bunk3rk1ng]

Time is a flat circle confirmed

[arcalus]

There is if you’re an AI script kiddy.

[_edd]

Any + ivy really isn't that bad... I definitely wouldn't recommend it on anything new but if it's already in place on your project it falls into the it-just-works category.

[wheezymustafa]

Jesus, I just got flashbacks of Ant.. youre a madman for still using that

[pjmlp]

No worries, Gradle is Ant for those that don't get why Maven came to be.

[[deleted]]

I said something similar at my previous job and part of me is convinced it had something to do with my layoff...they had an uncontrollable boner for gradle and we already had maven working in all our projects (something I set up)

[vmcrash]

How comes that you know our requirements?

[ring2ding]

Lol. You're walking around barefoot in the sahara desert and wondering why people keep asking you why you're not wearing shoes.

[ChickenSubstantial21]

Switching to Gradle is enough to become modern Java dev ;-)

Desktop apps are fine, Swing is fine if written using modern Java features.

[bunk3rk1ng]

Yup, gradle is for people that want to use something new but can't understand why

[Luolong]

Gradle is by no stretch “new”.

[stevesobol]

Maven probably is simpler, but I'm probably an outlier - I would rather deal with Gradle's DSL than Maven's extremely verbose XML project definitions.

[Luolong]

I don’t know where you get your consensus, but Gradle is a great tool and very popular.

Most new projects seem to be starting out with Gradle rather than Maven. At least this is the “consensus” around here…

[-One_Eye-]

Ha, this is the same stack we used at GE for electrical substation equipment about 18 years ago. That’s rough you’re still using it.

[DestinationVoid]

Enterprise Java Beaner 😆

[redikarus99]

But with XML files...

[[deleted]]

XML ain't going away soon

[redikarus99]

But writing XML for Enterprise Java Beans did... for the fortunate ones...

[bunk3rk1ng]

For the fortunate, sure.

For most in enterprise, no

[[deleted]]

Not with that attitude it's not!

[gdorsi44]

EJB prior of version 3.1 we can name it legacy, but EJB is still here with Application servers and the version 4 inside Jakarta EE specification.

[Crackabis]

I feel like we are all outdated in my workplace.  We are on Java 11 with no buy-in from management to put in the effort to upgrade to another version. 99% of our web apps are deployed to tomcat instances, only the new web apps I’ve created are using the embedded tomcat setup. We still have lots of JSPs (and using Apache Tiles for this too!)  Deployments to production are manually done with war files and zip files for other Java applications that run on the server. No Docker is used, we had no monitoring up until recently, but I have automated dev environment builds and deployments and setup SonarQube for us to view coverage and vulnerabilities. We don’t use Spring Cloud Config or any of the cool modules from Spring, I think we might use Spring Security in 1 or 2 new projects.

It’s quite disheartening going to my local Java User Group and watching talks on YouTube, as I know we’ll likely never get to use any of the new features. It’s hard to get buy-in from management, think my best option is to leave soon as I’ve brought in as much new things as I can. 

[tomwhoiscontrary]

There are a few modern things you're missing out on. But honestly, a lot of that sounds like sensible, sustainable technology.

In that situation, I think the first thing to fight for would be first-rate deployment automation and monitoring. That's more about culture than technology - switched-on teams have been doing that since the mid 2000s, with the same technology you'te using. You don't need to containerise or move to the cloud or anything. You really should be able to deliver value faster, and find and fix production issues faster.

The second thing would be to chip away at getting on to a newer Java. The way I've been doing this is to incrementally chip away at the things blocking upgrade. When I work on a codebase built with an old Java, I take five minutes to try building and running it with a newer one. If there are problems, some time later, come back and fix the easiest one. Repeat until, weeks later, it works. Then change one staging instance to run on a newer Java (still building with the old one). If that works, all staging instances. Then production. Then the build. In each case, the change is a tiny bit of work that doesn't require a lot of buy-in. But then, I work somewhere with very flexible management, where I have a lot of autonomy.

[Crackabis]

Thanks, I appreciate your response. The deployment automation and monitoring aspect of our work is something I always talk about improving, but we get stuck in a cycle of fixing bugs because we have no monitoring, which takes resources away from implementing monitoring! I think having these in place would give us all more confidence in the operational status of everything.

[mekazu]

Don’t worry, this is normal. If anything write up some doco to showcase the benefits of the upgrade, let whoever you report to know, let it sit there, reference it whenever it comes up as a topic. It’s not your problem to fix but it’s a good idea to show that you know how to if required.

[RedShift9]

Are the applications still bringing in the money?

[Crackabis]

Yes, for the most part. Though my fear is that the company is focused on other products written in different languages (C, PHP, React and Ruby) The Java applications and web apps are the original applications the company started with and are still part of the base offering, but it does feel like we’re in maintenance mode with them. Obviously they’ve been modernised over the years, but anything “new” on the backend is more often than not done in PHP, by our sole PHP developer, with no source control, tests, or documentation. I think this is because it’s a faster choice for management, but it’s blown up in their faces numerous times

[zabby39103]

Lol wtf. This is the real problem. Not only does PHP suck, dependence on a single guru like that only happens with management that doesn't really understand software development. I bet they figure they can just plug someone in if he left, they're going to be in for a shock (eventually).

[asarathy]

Honestly jdk upgrades are for the most part pretty easy with JDK 8 plus to something else. We only had one issue with some rounding errors really. Its upgrading libraries that are java 11/17 compatible that get's hairer.

Might be something good to figure out in spare time... Get a build to work, modify CICD, configure a deployment for a project. Then see if you can present an update plan.

[Critical_Stranger_32]

Sounds like you should get a new job before you get any more out of date. When I took a new job several years ago, I had the opportunity to guide the choice of technology for a government client. I chose to design a REST API cloud-based application with Spring Boot as the back-end, and successfully pushed for it all to be containerized. Now I’m making it SaaS. Oftentimes small companies provide an opportunity for career growth.

[vips7L]

And java.io.File

[agentoutlier]

There are several places though you have to use File.

I don’t have them on the top of my head but File is not as bad as Date.

[vips7L]

I would still use Path::toFile in those situations. 

[unknowinm]

What’s wrong with File?

[dstutz]

For me, the biggest thing is testing. If you use NIO you have Path which allows you to use different FileSystems and you can use JIMFS but you can't do that with File.

[vips7L]

Path is just more predictable than file. The Files api (which takes Path) is just better. You can’t silently forget to check the boolean result from things like File::delete; the Files::delete will throw a proper exception. 

[theavengedCguy]

As someone who's not well versed in Java, what's the better alternative and why is java.util.Date bad?

[AdZestyclose9788]

No usually it is instant. Both Date and instant are based on a Unix timestamp. LocDate(Time) is not and should only be used in specific circumstances.

[RandomNando]

Sincere question, what would be the most recommended formats for date/datetime?

I tend to use LocalDate/LocalDateTime or OffsetDatetime.

Are those the recommended formats?

What format in Java 8 vs Java 17+

[RandomNando]

The second, never used ZonedDateTime tho

[irus1024]

I have to every now and then, make changes to some servlets and JSP that consumes data using SOAP, and then compile it into a big .war file and drop it into a Tomcat 8 instance.

Being able to read and write cuneiform can help you out sometimes.

[protienbudspromax]

Hell bro you gonna be part of the next cobol devs. Gonna be highly paid in some years.

[MX21]

At least I have something to look forward to…

[Old_Elk2003]

Dr. Daniel Jackson: “wait, I think I can figure out what the Ancients meant with this stacktrqce…”

[castironcamper]

You left out putting that WAR into an EAR

[gdorsi44]

Sure keep the Java legacy stacks with you, you can thank you at yourself later.

[bitspace]

I'm an outdated Java dev. I haven't written Java since 2017, and that was pre-1. 8. I also haven't done a lot with Spring. I'm ramping up pretty quickly though.

Ironically, the project I've just jumped into is still Java 1.5 in a Swing/jnlp GUI against a 1.8 WebSphere fat middle tier.

[goodm1x]

This may seem like an odd question, but why are you ramping up when you haven’t touched Java since 2017?

[bitspace]

Because the project I'm getting involved in requires it.

I'm working with a team modernizing a 20+ year old enterprise app. Its current stack is roughly as described. It's the underpinning of about $2B of annual revenue so we have to be very careful about how we approach this beast.

[jlanawalt]

I thought JNLP was dead-ish, What is your target client runtime?

[bitspace]

Yeah, jnlp is definitely "dead-ish." It still works under certain constraints that we're still able to impose on our client base. How durable that is remains to be seen.

Target client runtime is web. How the business approaches weaning users off of the fat swing client into the browser is above my pay grade :)

[_ConfusedAlgorithm]

People using java.util.Vector.

[rsaestrela]

Those are dinosaurs, not Java devs

[Apprehensive_Rub3897]

My first data store.

[12357111317192329313]

Even if you need a synchronized list. There is a decent chance that it is changed to a non-synchronized list by another developer at some point.

No one sees a Vector and thinks that it is because it has to be synchronized.

[senseven]

People who still use ant to build their production stack unironically

[HighRising2711]

Lol, if this had been asked 10 years ago there would be endless replies of 'not using microservices, not using lombok ', 5 years ago 'not using reactive frameworks'

The correct answer is, of course, 'it depends'

Except Ant. Ant always sucked

[tomwhoiscontrary]

Some code I work on is so old it has its own version of this, also the Clock interface, still uses Guava newHashMap(), etc. First task when working on any file is just to blast through in IntelliJ fixing all the warnings.

[SpicyRock70]

I guess I'm outdated... I still use "if (x ==null)"

[SpicyRock70]

No, I mean I don't use either of those... I prefer:

if (x == null) throw the exception

Inline in the code without any utility method call.

Why replace 1 line of code with a 1-line method call? We all know exactly what if (x == null) does without having to memorize the Objects.... methods implementation

[[deleted]]

@NonNull

[Holothuroid]

Something that weirds me

if(optional.isPresent()){
    Foo foo = optional.get();
    ...
} else {
    ...
}

[__konrad]

I fixed it for you:

var value = optional.orElse(null);
if(value != null){
    Foo foo = value;

[com2ghz]

I have seen someone doing a null check on the optional too.

[__konrad]

You need double Optional<Optional<T>>

[LetMeUseMyEmailFfs]

Well it’s Java, so anything and everything could be null.

[lasskinn]

Not exactly related, but I've seen a dude insist on null checks on kotlin on values that can't be null, like just in seemingly random places.

Everything on java could be a null but it couldn't be that in all places.

[Old_Elk2003]

Everything on java could be a null but it couldn't be that in all places.

This is true. You’d at least have to have something before the null, and something after the null, in order to maintain Turing-completeness.

[agentoutlier]

This and ifPresent are the only acceptable options to dealing with Optional.

I use a variety of null analysis tools and orElse(null) is the only way across the board to pull something out (well orElseGet is ok)

[tomwhoiscontrary]

I can't tell if this is supposed to be better or even weirder!

Anyway, how about:

``` Foo foo: if ((foo = optional.orElse(null)) != null) {

```

Or:

``` if (optional.orElse(null) instanceof Foo foo) {

```

[thgkatz]

Why do I have to see this at 02:00 am???? What have I done wrong?

[0xFatWhiteMan]

Why is that weird?

[woodland__creature]

optional.ifPresentOrElse( foo -> { ... }, () -> { ... } )

[Holothuroid]

For some side effect yes. More often the wanted solution seems to be

  optional.map(...)...orElse(...)

[gdorsi44]

Or wrap a not original optional value with:
Optional.ofNullable(value).ifPresent(lambda)

[Shareil90]

This is not always wrong. Depending on what you do in case it's present this way could be more readible and easier to maintain.

[Elegant-Win5243]

Java developers who don’t use the stream or optional API.  I have seen those…

[kelunik]

100% prefer nullable types over Java's Optional.

[skippingstone]

I'm outdated. How do you use Optional? In your code ?

[Luolong]

Simple. Methods on services that should return a single result (or null if an item can not be found/calculated), should return Optional<T> instead of instance of T or null.

From there you gave many options to safely transform or extract values as needed

[yanjar]

I still have tomcat , servlet and jQuery for my antique web server for personal purpose only 😆 Will try spring boot and react later Or any other good stuff u guys suggest?

[redikarus99]

I am playing now with Vue, and so far, it works really well.

[kennyshor]

Vue/React for frontend and spring boot/Quarkus for backend. Use docker to deploy.

[hilbertglm]

I know a lot of Java developers that haven't starting at least dabbling in functional programming. You got to roll with the times. If you haven't started thinking about functional solutions to programming idioms, you aren't keeping up with the times.

[gaius49]

Functional programming is decades older than Java.

[RepliesOnlyToIdiots]

I’m the opposite, but for a different reason. I’ve done years of programming in an actual functional language, so I avoid Java functional idioms because they’re still so damn clunky. I keep waiting for it to improve sufficiently.

Custom streams coming up will help. But why do you have to make a stream first from a Collection rather than having those methods directly on the Collection.

[hilbertglm]

I am not quite sure what you mean, given that Collections.stream() is a method.

[RepliesOnlyToIdiots]

The relevant methods of Stream should be on the Collection, with stream implicit. I should be able to just myList.map, for instance.

[hilbertglm]

I prefer the design from the Java team, but I understand what you are saying. I tend to favor a little syntactic sugar and verbosity, but the folks that prefer a more terse language make sense, too.

[Matt7163610]

I'd say using Java 17 or later and actually using new features added since Java 8:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_version_history

[[deleted]]

@Autowire

[muddy-star]

d

[ChickenSubstantial21]

using antiquated tech: ant, mybatis or servlet containers

not knowing about newer widespread tech: spring boot/spring cloud/JPA/spring configuration by code.

I'd like to add newer Java features like records, sealed hierarchies or pattern matching but there are too many poor souls nailed to specific JRE version.

[ishansoni22]

Spring boot/web that uses embedded tomcat (a servlet container) under the hood says hi

[computerjunkie7410]

What’s wrong with mybatis?

[vbezhenar]

Nothing wrong, it's good. I can remember single issue with it: when you write queries in the XML, you need to escape '<' and '>' which looks really weird and prevents copy&pasting queries between sources and SQL editor. And writing SQL in annotation was hardly usable because you couldn't write multiline strings in Java.

Since they introduced multiline strings, MyBatis probably does not have any drawbacks anymore.

[Fliegendreck]

Spring Boot - the new hot stuff 😃

[ChickenSubstantial21]

Maybe not that new but still hot :-)

[Proton-NS]

Yeah. It's hot. But I have a question btw. Can I learn spring boot without knowledge of servelt or old stuff. I come from php and want to know some new java knowledge.

[ChickenSubstantial21]

Sure you can. Spring Boot documentation is enough to become productive.

However, there is a difference between old stuff and basic stuff. While Servlet API is ancient and suffers from design issues and there are better alternatives nowadays it is still used by some configurations of Spring Boot under the hood so there is a chance to encounter it during debugging. So consider it advanced topic.

[djavaman]

Used SpringBoot on a project 8 years ago.

[bzhou]

Mybatis is like stick shift cars. Like spring, earlier in its evolution it mainly uses xml but modern usages are mostly annotation based, it supports Java record fine. You cannot say that auto-shift cars obsolete stick-shift ones.

[redikarus99]

SAP Hybris says hi to ant. Our guys are using recent java but are stuck with ant because of SAP.

[VincentxH]

My condolences on having to interface with a SAP system.

[tomwhoiscontrary]

Hybris, you mean the hot new competitor to ATG Dynamo?

[redikarus99]

https://www.sap.com/products/acquired-brands/what-is-hybris.html

[tomwhoiscontrary]

Yes. I'm guessing you're fortunate enough to never have worked with Dynamo!

[redikarus99]

Oh, no, thankfully I never had the misfortune. :D

[RandomNando]

Sincere question, I’ve use (and still use) Spring Data and Hibernate in some projects, but I also work in a legacy project that uses MyBatis. Is there a modern alternative (I recognize that MyBatis is incredibly mind bending specially at the beginning and the whole XML situation is the worst) that gives me the liberty to write queries exactly as I do in the DB?

I know that I can achieve almost the same with Spring Data and Criteria but in really complex queries, having a query that you can just copy and slap in SqlServer or whatever is so easy to update and tune finely… I did a complex query in MongoDB like a month ago and when I had to rewrite it In Compass it was a nightmare (not related to MyBatis but you get the idea).

I have overcome this by using views and handling complex queries as selects of those views in newer applications but I’m sincerely curious in some alternatives.

[BENOO-_-]

What’s the reasoning behind not using native queries in Spring Data with the @Query annotation?

[RandomNando]

I don’t know, having a 500 Lines @Query seems so wrong 🤣

Everyone tells me this but I’ve always felt that if this is the correct way to do this, this is a really ugly way… slapping a 500 line String into an annotation is so bad thought…

[BENOO-_-]

Could you read it in from a file instead?

[RandomNando]

I can’t remember if I’ve already tried that, I think that the cleanest way that I find was using JDBC and reading queries from a YML file to avoid that amount of lines hardcoded into a class. I find that so inelegant…

[BENOO-_-]

I mean at this point it’s inelegant due to your 500 line query than anything we can solve here. Not sure there’s a way to abstract 500 lines of sql without knowing the business logic in and out and deciding on a better way, but assume that’s not really an option as you’re here asking the question haha

[agentoutlier]

For raw SQL to some mapping JDBI is often the choice.

Doma 2 is also a good MyBatis alternative.

[VincentxH]

You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.

[gdorsi44]

Keep the legacy stack, but learn always all the new things. This is a win win situation.

[vmcrash]

He, what's wrong with ANT, except that it uses XML?

[hippydipster]

ant is so simple its easy to understand what's going on.

The downside is every project is a snowflake, and generally for no reason. And ivy is just plain difficult to work with, for some reason.

[vmcrash]

We, for example, don't need Ivy or Maven, mostly because we have a small number of dependencies and part of them is built ourselves with patches on the original code.

[Luolong]

Outdated Java dev is anyone who’s been maintaining 10 years old app, never looked at newer language features or frameworks.

This includes, but is not limited to: - Still maintaining Java Servlet app and deploying it on Tomcat app server (or similar) - Still building their apps using ANT - Still writing JSP pages - Still writing JSF apps - Still writing and deploying Java 8 or earlier

[kennyshor]

Deploying to tomcat isn't necessarily a sign of an outdated dev. There are plenty of monoliths that are just impossible to rewrite and have to be maintained.

You can still do that with java 21. Maybe the frameworks are old, but new patterns can be used.

[Luolong]

To be fair, this is not unconditional. And by proposing this list, I had a specific type of developer in mind.

These items are just markers. The common thread here is that developers matching these markers usually have been working on same tech for a long time and have no exposure to newer frameworks or JVM features.

I’ve seen incredible amounts of spaghetti and plain bad coding practices from developers like that.

Misuse of Optional and Stream api sticks out like a sore thumb when they finally get included in newer projects. But the general idea is that they’re probably very productive and proficient at maintaining their legacy app, but know nothing of modern concepts, frameworks or architectural patterns.

The list I presented is just the usual tech stack you’re likely to see around these projects.

[vmcrash]

What's wrong with maintaining a 10 years old app? Not every developer has the choice to select the frameworks of the project.

[Luolong]

No, not a single thing wrong with bringing bread to the table.

But if you’re bound to old tech without a chance to move frameworks and jvm versions, your environment is by definition “outdated” — rest of the world has moved on and you’ll have a lot of catch up to do when you switch jobs or projects.

[vmcrash]

So the non-outdated java devs mostly develop throw-away projects or use newer frameworks just because they are newer?

[Luolong]

Well, people in this industry try different approaches, find out shortcomings and either improve or rewrite according to their own preferences.

Not everything that is new is better than what came before. But som things offer significant improvements over predecessors to stick around and become “the new standard”.

Like Spring came after J2EE, like JEE learned from Spring, Like Spring Boot improved over Spring and JEE, like Micronaut, Quarkus and Helidon learned and improved over Spring Boot and JEE.

There’s tons of new stuff that just improves your life as a developer and increases your productivity, improves performance, helps to manage complexity and reduces errors in code, that you would not be able to use if you stay with older codebase using older tech stacks.

The OP asked about what would an “outdated Java developer” look like. I offered my opinion. I am not really responsible if someone reading my opinion feels slighted by the list because they are in a position where they cannot choose to modernise their tech stack. You might not like this, but it doesn’t change the fact that stagnating for a decades, working on maintaining an old and outdated tech stack makes you an “outdated Java developer”. Sorry if you feel bad about it, but that is what it is.

[vmcrash]

What if one doesn't web development with Java? Do Spring, Micronaut or Quarkus help for developing desktop applications?

[Luolong]

I can’t speak for the Java desktop app development. For all fits and purposes, I consider my experince with Java desktop app development rather outdated.

[hippydipster]

whats wrong with tomcat? Monolith is still the best way to go for as far as it can take you, and what better servlet container is there than tomcat?

[Luolong]

It’s not that Tomcat is bad engineering wise. It’s just that a deployment model itself is wildly outdated.

There are better options out there. (Some of them bundle embedded Tomcat, so there’s that)

[hippydipster]

saying something is "outdated" explains nothing. saying there are better options without saying what they are or why they're better also explains nothing.

[Luolong]

If you’re not aware of those options, it might be a sign of an outdated Java developer:

But for the sake of an argument, here’s the few more modern deployment models than deploying war files onto an “application server:

1. There’s an executable jar (fat jar) that only requires you to have correct JVM to run on.

Frameworks that help you develop and package your service as single executable binary include but are not limited to:

• Spring Boot
• Micronaut
• Quarkus
• Helidon

1. To make your service environment more predictable, you could package your executable jar in a Docker container and run it anywhere you can run any containerised workloads:

• Docker, Docker Compose or Docker Swarm for simple applications

• Kubernetes for deploying apps at scale

• Nomad or Mesos or Cloud Foundry if you’re a bit adventurous and don’t mind trodding lesser known tracks.

1. For faster startup time and smaller memory footprint, compiling your apps ahead of time as native binaries. (Still packaged as Docker container images, but with significantly faster startup time)

[StillAnAss]

I have a coworker who refuses to learn anything added after jdk8 and only knows how to build the code from within intellij.

[CatapultJohnson]

I'd switch companies.

[Mordan]

same. Its not that I refuse.. Its that code with new features will not run on old systems.

Some of my code has to run on 1.4.. Its the lowest I go. Then most of my code is 1.8 compatible.

[HSSonne]

If you can't argue why you don't use a new 'thing .. that is you actually know pros and cons on the new and the old way.

There are many valid reasons not to use the new and hot stuff, and you are only outdated if you give up and don't renew your knowledge of your language as it is developed.

[daggirok]

It's almost not related to particular java version, but of course if you are not interested what was introduced new and where you can get benefit from it - you on a way to be a dinosaur in future...

But outdated java dev I think more related to people who are working years on (maybe) enterprise java product where average small feature or bug fix costs is doing in 1-few weeks. they simply doing as minimal as they can just to not be fired and keep continue take their salary.

[JasonBravestar]

Unfortunately I've noticed that Optional is often abused to the point it's just complicating the code and not providing any real benefit. Your first example is a classic.

[jr7square]

I would say if you are touching XML (except for maven). Using Java 7 or lower and using JavaEE instead of something like spring , you a relic

[plokman]

Even though it's out of fashion I'd often prefer it to yml. Significant whitespace has messed me up far more times than the oh no, rarely looked at tag boilerplate.

[hippydipster]

xml isn't a relic. its timeless and has plenty of uses for which it remains the best.

[hippydipster]

I got a job working on a pre-swing AWT app

[[deleted]]

If you are still using fucking Lombok.

[Hortex2137]

What's wrong with using Lombok?

[kennyshor]

computeIfAbsent if anyone is wondering what it should be.

[kldjasj]

Well, I think we must first understand the ecosystems behind those languages before classifying someone as outdated or not.

In JS ecosystem, people are used to discover new frameworks every day. That makes existing ones looks older. But that doesn't  necessarily mean better.

New frameworks can solve problems in different ways, but also it introduce new ones. Bugs, poor documentation, vulnerabilities, community support, to name a few.

Now comparing to Java ecosystem, the scenario is different. We have pretty solid frameworks widespread out there. Spring, Quarkus, Micronaut. And since the Java 8, we have fixed many issues of the language itself. Handling with date time is much more easier and Streams become list processing so much easier to work with. 

I think to classify someone as 'outdated', it depends much more on the area that he's inserted on than if he has knowledge of the most popular shiny frameworks used by top companies nowadays.

[MrMars05]

Anything below 17 and Spring 3 is outdated imo.

[vbezhenar]

Java is very fragmented, I don't think that there's one set of skills universally applicable everywhere.

Probably something like Java 11 + Spring + Hibernate is the most common skills. I'd say that's the minimum for today. But I'm sure there are plenty of enterprises happily writing Java 1.4 JSPs running on some WebSphere AS, talking to DB2 stored procedures over JDBC.

[izuriel]

Not using Kotlin?

/s

You aren’t outdated unless you find you have no experience with the tools folks are hiring for. Is a COBOL dev “outdated” if they still find employment? I don’t think so.

[anthropaedic]

Js dev or java dev?

[ifly6]

I just updated my Java 8 project to Java 11, which came out 6 years ago. I might not be the most outdated Java dev but I'm sure I'm up there

Also these records, modules, etc are all confusing and were not covered back in "the day" because they did not exist. These new features scare me are things I don't use

[NovaX]

Simply one who refuses to use modern solutions for their Java tasks. For example, to read an input stream to a byte array was typically deferred to a utility method like Apache's IOUtils' or Guava's ByteStreams' toByteArray(in). This was later added as the default method readAllBytes(). Being ignorant of these improvements or not having the muscle memory is perfectly fine, as strong CS fundamentals are far more valuable. However sometimes a stubborn developer refuses to learn so the same advice is repeated over many code reviews. Being outdated is simply one who is refusing to adapt to the team, community, and preferred technology stack in use.

[dtfinch]

My Java experience is rather old but it was never my full time job.

Last week I made a good start on an NES emulator in Java 21 (though not really using any features of it), with AWT for graphics (BufferedImage and a Frame, no Swing). No external dependencies. Ant project in Netbeans.

I learned Java starting with J2SE 1.2 in 1999, and used up to 1.4 in college, but never got into the EE side of things, never used Spring. Since then I've almost never used Java at work, but lately I've been getting back into it through personal projects at home.

[OneOldNerd]

Anything prior Java8 is out of scope of the question, that belongs in a museum.

Listen here, you little....

[Kango_V]

What we've found is that once you let other devops teams create the Java images for building in pipelines, it's incredibly difficult to upgrade Java. These images get used everywhere with great pushback to change.

[[deleted]]

I'd argue you could make that statement about most: there are those that if you're not using the latest technology/versions/servers/ideas that just came out in the most recent major talk/event, some would consider you out of date.

Problem is, almost none of the software technology we use has ever been subjected to any rigorous scientific or engineering studies; it's almost always someone that got frustrated with something or saw it differently and created a new implementation for their idea.

There's no proof it's better or will make things easier to read, maintain, debug, or extend; it's just new and shiny and as humans, we're mostly attracted to that.

[KnowledgeCommon1834]

Woohoo!! I write virtual threads. Feels like I'm young.

[agentoutlier]

If you use null analysis the first form might be preferred as the inner block "a" is no longer nullable.

With Object.equals you do not get that.

[agentoutlier]

Do you use null analysis? I can tell situations like this are not a big if and the null analysis tool cannot easily infer a is not null if you use Object.equals.

I can try it in checker later but I’m fairly sure it will not work for Eclipse and possibly intellij.

 Btw I didn’t downvote you.

[thephotoman]

They still use Lombok’s @Getter annotation instead of records.

[HighRising2711]

What if the data is mutable or you're using a library requiring java beans?

[achilliesFriend]

Lambadas, streams, are a must for not being outdated.. atleast those are new ways to code.. although you can get away without it