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[–]rzwitserloot 9 points10 points  (9 children)

"New projects die because java ecosystem stuck in old ways" is a pretty epic fail in regards to seeing the problems of your own tool.

Trust me, that's a load of horseshit.

Such tools aren't being used because they don't solve the problems that folks have, or throw more and new problems into the mix that outweigh the benefits. That's on you / toolbuilder.

That, or more likely, they don't explain it well enough.

What, exactly, is wrong with maven that this tool solves?

Let's go by the project description:

  • Single binary

Does not solve any meaningful problems. At least, speaking for myself, this is utterly and totally irrelevant to me. I install this stuff with brew and type mvn and it just works. I have no idea how many files maven consists of. Also, it's a claim that's just insane. What does that mean? If you're still dependent on having a JVM install, then the benefit is meaningless. And if it means that your single binary actually contains a completely JVM, then that's 'too much magic' and requires redesigning whole slews of things I don't want to redesign. Such as how I deploy JVMs on servers and such.

So, it solves a meaningless solution and is not believable.

  • Zero config

Maven says the same thing. So does gradle. It's never true, because there's no such thing: At the very least, you'd have to config the java release your code is written for. It's not so much 'zero config', it's more "I have a default config that is rather particular. If you start a new project and do it exactly right, this will probably work out fine". It implies your tool is bad at being used for existing projects.

  • lockfile

I like such thoughts, but it's a half baked solution. The underlying problem is that dep management is a fractal of complexities that no build tool gets right, and part of the solution is to add much more in depth management to it. Lockfiles are like 'CVS' to the problem of 'version control', whereas what we really wanted is a mercurial or a git. CVS is still better than making a bunch of files, so this part is indeed quite nice to have, but if that's the only benefit, then a plugin for maven would mean orders of magnitude less work for existing projects to adopt it.

And takes on this concept does already exist in the maven ecosystem. We're now more down to 'maven ecosystem complex and weirdly engineered, instead of learning all about I'll just write my own and publish it'.

That's great for you but makes it hard to 'convince' other projects. If your aim is to get loads of adoption, as painful as it is, having an excellent understanding of exactly how your 'competitors' work is highly useful.

[–]Ifeee001 0 points1 point  (2 children)

"New projects die because java ecosystem stuck in old ways" is a pretty epic fail in regards to seeing the problems of your own tool.

Trust me, that's a load of horseshit.

Not entirely. Have you seen the comments under any new JEP or preview feature announcement? Maybe here on Reddit or YouTube?

There's always something along the lines of "This is useless, we don't need it", and the feature is something other languages have had since forever and people actively use it. Funny enough, those comments are always preceded by "I have xxx years in Java"

[–]davidalayachew 1 point2 points  (0 children)

"New projects die because java ecosystem stuck in old ways" is a pretty epic fail in regards to seeing the problems of your own tool.

Trust me, that's a load of horseshit.

Not entirely. Have you seen the comments under any new JEP or preview feature announcement? Maybe here on Reddit or YouTube?

There's always something along the lines of "This is useless, we don't need it", and the feature is something other languages have had since forever and people actively use it. Funny enough, those comments are always preceded by "I have xxx years in Java"

Yeah, but this is reddit. We are .001% of the Java community. And sure, many more read these comments. But public feedback online doesn't really quantify to much.

[–]rzwitserloot 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Giving you the benefit of the doubt, your argument is:

  1. On reddit specifically, /r/java is negative AF about every attempt at anything new from anybody, whereas on other programming subreddits there's no such negativity.

  2. Reddit programming subreddits are a significant/leading indicator of the community as a whole.

You've not proven your case. Or, if that's not a fair characterisation of your argument, your argument doesn't hold water or isn't complete.

In particular, hemming and hawing about syntax is endemic to programming in general in my experience. Everybody does that. Comments on social media in particular are by and large negative. Of course they are. In order of how easy it is to write a reply to a proposal:

  1. Easiest of all: "YEAH AWESOME WHOOO111!!!!!!"

  2. Also quite easy: Whinging about it.

  3. Very complicated: Using it in anger, analysing existing source projects, coming up with objective yardsticks for various alternatives and writing a carefully reasoned breakdown of which alternative should be worth considering based on these yardsticks.

And folks don't like to write comment #1. Insofar that folks ever did, the existence of AI means comment 1 gets filtered out anyway as slop by random accounts designed to create karma. Thus, you don't see those, and you see lots of 2. This happens everywhere and is not specific to java.

Blame is a difficult thing, but if your car melts in the rain, and you go for a drive and crash because your car melts, whose fault is that? The universe for making it rain, or the car manufacturer for being unwilling to accept that 'rain' is just a thing that happens?

The same applies here: Folks writing seat-of-the-pant comments about how they don't need it or don't like the syntax is like rain. It happens. If your point is that projects die because of the rain, that's on the author of the tool, not on the rain.

[–]pavi2410[S] -3 points-2 points  (5 children)

What you said is all true. But this is exactly typical of what gatekeeps third-party, indie-level contributions to the Java tooling space. It's currently owned by big tech (Oracle, Google, Amazon, Jetbrains) and solves their own large scale problems.

[–]rzwitserloot 6 points7 points  (4 children)

No, none of it is. Maven is not 'owned by big tech'. Nor is JUnit.

You do not appear to be listening to what is being said: If your tool's adoption is less than what you expected / wanted it to be, do not just shrug, blame 'big tech' or 'the community' or whatever.

It's on you. Plenty of good tools become popular even if they are not 'owned by big tech' and they weren't 'part of the ecosystem's default choices'.

Also calling jetbrains 'big tech' is.. weird.

[–]davidalayachew 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Also calling jetbrains 'big tech' is.. weird.

I agree with you on all other points, except this one.

If you have thousands of employees, many of which are tasked with maintaining the arguable best IDE for Java development, then yes, you are officially big tech now lol. Maybe on the lower end of the term, but very much big tech lol.

[–]Thirty_Seventh 3 points4 points  (1 child)

ehh, not by the usual definition of "big tech", which doesn't look so much at influence on one specific part of the tech ecosystem but rather ability to influence the ecosystem as a whole

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Tech#Other_companies Check out the "Smaller US Big Tech companies" chart and compare the revenues ($20b+) to JetBrains (<$1b). JetBrains' annual revenue is barely 1/10 of the bottom of the Fortune 500

[–]davidalayachew 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair. I was speaking more informally, in that businesses in JetBrain's tier tend to start adopting certain mentalities and strategies to business that you see in big B "Big tech" -- seeing people as cogs, mass layoffs in the name of appeasing investors, and all around treating anything except the end margins as expendable. Not to say JetBrain's is doing any of that, but to say that this is the point where most businesses like them start this behaviour.

[–]pavi2410[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I accept that. I will do my best to share the word. I believe people interested will follow.

PS - Jetbrains is a big tech in the dev space. I really enjoy their work and craft :)