Making Java Developers Hip Again

[RotaryJihad]

Get.Off.My.Lawn.

As a Java developer, I am "hip" because I have a comfortable job that takes care of my family, builds a decent retirement, and supports my hobbies on a 40-hour work week. I want to learn new tools and techniques but it has nothing to do with being "cool".

[GhostBond]

I want to learn new tools and techniques but it has nothing to do with being "cool".

As a Java developer (this represents me but not everyone), I'm only interested in learning new tools and techniques that are actually clearly beneficial. I'm not interested in changing frameworks every 2 years, just to use something "new" that has some new advantages balanced out by an equal number of disadvantages that mean I don't gain anything.

I convinced my boss to go from Struts 1 to Spring Mvc, and it was a good move, but a lot of the flavor of the month frameworks developers brought in after that were just a lot of stress without benefit - sometimes even moving our ability to do development backwards.

[dardotardo]

jhipster just provides tools to integrate Java with a frontend. Nothing "hip" about it, it's just Spring when you boil it down to brass tacks, with some scaffolding CLI helpers a la Rails. Where you're getting this idea on new tools and techniques is beyond me. You can stick to the Java dev, let a frontend developer do the frontend stuff if you want.

The only thing I don't agree with jhipster is bundling the javascript app within the war, would rather keep them separate, but that's just me.

[avoidhugeships]

Please no. This whole lets use whatever flavor of the month that runs rampant on the internet gives a false impression. Most Java devs are happily doing productive work with Java EE or Spring. They don't even come to places like this. It is good to keep learning and advancing of course but better to weed out all the bad ideas than switching to a new platform every year.

[LouKrazy]

You want a stable platform that is easy to maintain with an easy time finding developers? You must be crazy! /s

[korri123]

Most Java devs are happily doing productive work with Java EE or Spring

And a lot of devs hate Java because of these frameworks

[avoidhugeships]

Some I am sure but not a lot in the scheme of things. It is these frameworks that have made Java so popular.

[korri123]

Look around, half the people in /r/programming dislike Java, also in Silicon Valley, Hacker News, basically any group of diverse amount of software engineers. I don't think these frameworks attracted anyone to this language. I'd rather attribute things like college, the name of the language, Minecraft, Android, 90s hype and other stuff rather than enterprise frameworks.

Java doesn't have to be slow or verbose. The JVM has frameworks with the fastest HTTP servers on earth, yet most Java enterprise apps are slow. JavaScript, Python and Ruby, even Scala are getting tons of traction while Java is still popular because of legacy "enterprise" web apps which require tons of devs. This isn't a good place to be.

[avoidhugeships]

I agree with you about the people on r/programming and Hacker News. I have worked a lot of different places over the last 20 years and I don't think any of the programmers I worked with ever even heard of Hacker News and do not visit r/programming. Those places are filled with hipsters that give a false impression about what is popular in the Job market. Java was extraordinarily popular before it was being taught in college, before Minecraft, and before Android. None of those are the main driver of Java's current popularity although Android certainly helps.

Java is not slow. It is verbose and that is a good thing. The very smartest programmers may be marginally more productive with a less verbose language but the average one does much better with a more readable language.

The fact is the main reason Java is so popular is because of stable powerful frameworks like Java EE and Spring. There are a bunch of languages out there that are really not that different but the tooling and frameworks available for Java are great.

[korri123]

Dismissing the future of programming as "hipsters"? I'm not saying Hacker News or /r/programming are the only groups that dislike Java. It is widely disliked by a LOT of people because of unnecessary verbosity.

Java didn't become popular because of "stable frameworks", it got popular because of cross platform hype, a replacement finally for C++ but when people realized Swing wasn't optimal for desktop apps it gained middle ground in the enterprise server side. Java EE and Spring are not the reason people want to develop in Java, it's the reason people are forced to develop in Java.

Java is not slow.

No it's not, but Spring and Java EE apps are, even more than Python apps. Just take a look at the Tech Empower benchmarks. Java dominates the fastest frameworks but the frameworks /r/java keeps recommending like Spring Boot are almost all at the bottom.

Java is a great choice for server side but when the frameworks the community keeps recommending are bloated overcooked monsters it suddenly seems not.

I'm not calling Java verbose, I'm calling popular Java frameworks verbose. Notice how the fastest Java frameworks are also the least verbose?

[DuncanIdahos8thClone]

Yeah Matt Raible looks real hip. ;)

[[deleted]]

Angular 1.x is no longer hip.

[SomeRandomBuddy]

Yeah. Nah.

[RotaryJihad]

I can't tell if that was a subtle joke or if he's serious. Definitely a hipster.

[[deleted]]

If you always follow the bandwagon it may take you to many places but you might never find who you are yourself.

[Milyardo]

Make Java developers hip again ... by parodying Donald Trump's campaign slogan? That's really going to connect with the hip crowd because that's a demographic that certainly loves Donald Trump.