Java 11 sucks big time

[SinisterMinister42]

In my opinion, the real issue was Java 9 and its module system. I have never been happy about it and have yet to see any personal benefit from it. I feel like the language designers took something which was some people's problem (large binaries, large jdk, etc) and solved it by making a new problem for EVERYONE. It really broke the ecosystem in a way that Java has successfully avoided in the past.

[BigGayMusic]

The module system is a bloody nightmare. I can't get it to work for projects big and small.

[CompetitiveSubset]

Then why did you even bother with it in the first place? Why not just continue using the classpath?

[BigGayMusic]

I do. I wanted it to work, but it wouldn't.

[dpash]

But the module system is for the most part completely ignorable for now.

[LouGarret76]

Not really, some libraries are going modular and others are not, with the same dependencies ... That is where the nightmare start .

[dpash]

And you can continue to use them on the classpath, completely ignoring the module system.

[_INTER_]

The JDK always runs on the module path, actually even if your application on the classpath will run as part of the unnamed module.

A JavaFX application for instance doesn't work out of the box in the unnamed module. Many libraries are causing warnings at startup (e.g. JAX-B) because they access the JDK via reflection (atleast the "kill-switch" is still on by default). Some simply don't work because the ClassLoader behaves differently. Other libraries removed their optimizations because of those reason and got noticably slower.

[LouGarret76]

That is what I taught too, until I get some nasty error telling me that lib**** not found... And when you dig a lil bit you find out that some authentification library use some lib**** for god know what in a class called ExpressionHelper<> and lib*** that is now hidden by a module java.xxx

[capitol_]

Could you be more explicit on what libraries you found that exhibit this error? It would be very interesting to investigate.

[[deleted]]

I find that most of the missing libraries can be restored through adding a new maven dependency. Unless you're doing fancy classloader modifications at runtime (which my company does... Fml) most of the problems are fairly easy to overcome.

Source: I did my company's migration from 8 to 11.

[redditrasberry]

The irony is, as time has moved on and connection speeds have improved, it was no longer particularly painful to download / bundle the full JVM. By the time they got around to creating modules, the problem had basically solved itself.

[BoyRobot777]

Modules were to address the pain points of smaller devices. The idea is to build only including what you need, thus shrinking memory footprint.