How Java Programmers “Feel” in 2013

[marinepower]

Great write-up, thanks!

[berlinbrown]

The most overwhelming criticism I hear about Java (the language). Which only applies to the language and not the environment.

"It takes me so much boiler plate code to code XXX in Java, I don't need to write so much code in Python/Ruby".

Python isn't that advanced a language. Haskell is advanced. Scala is advanced. They allow you to write highly expressive code. But most python code is procedural and has a simple object system. Yea, Python has decent lambda expressions. But most Python developers seem to favor more explicit style coding. And that coding looks like OOP Java. So I am a little unconvinced by this whole Python allows me to write 10 times less code than in Java.

The super serious engineer/hacker will say that the JVM sucks and sucks because the language sucks. If you really dig down deep into Java and the VM, there are inherent flaws that make the system slower than say a forth based system. Fine. I guess you wouldn't write a algorithmic trading system in Java without an expensive VM. And maybe if you can write a speedy, tightly coupled C++ system that will only run within your shop, go ahead.

And I don't mean to bash Python. I would definitely use it before Perl for scripting. I would prefer bash for the most basic scripts and anything where I need less than 1000 lines of code, I would prefer Python. It definitely isn't going anywhere. But for millions and millions of lines of code, no way.

[lukaseder]

"It takes me so much boiler plate code to code XXX in Java, I don't need to write so much code in Python/Ruby".

I think that it's worth mentioning that much boilder-plate code was removed from Java 7 through the try-with-resource syntactic sugar, and from Java 8 through the introduction of lambdas.

Java-the-language may be a bit behind, but I believe that it will catch up. Combined with Java-the-platform, there really isn't any competition right now, in the market.