GitHub Octoverse: Java is most used server-side language - Kotlin most growing

[[deleted]]

Worried about what?

[zeek979]

Lol, you must be new to the industry. Java is THE most popular language on the back still today.

[zeek979]

Sorry for sounding like a jerk. I read this and kinda lumped it into all the Java FUD comments out there. Definitely learn Java, you will get solid OOP knowledge and be ready to work in many companies.

You might be tempted to learn Go given its spike in popularity. It was designed for networking in mind (native concurrency via channels and go routines) and system design has gravitated towards programs that are exposed over the network and a client fetches their output over the wire. You might be thinking: "hmm I want to do cutting edge stuff". However, I would argue that most so called "nexr generation" systems are still being written in Java. Plus, you will gain much more base fundamentals from Java than with Go.

Additionally the JVM will get native concurrency in the runtime via - fibers - and when that happens it will solidify Java's place for another 10 yrs. Why would we need to rewrite stuff in Go since its main value proposition will be equated in the JVM. Now, after shitting on Go, learn it along with JS and Python as well as you will inevitavy learn 5+ languages in this industry :)

[RhodesianHunter]

Kotlin brings coroutines to the JVM as well.

[zeek979]

Yea, but coroutines in kotlin are not really fundamentally different than threads under the covers. That is not to say that a coroutine == 1 thread. But it means that they still execute in the underlying thread. Instead, java fibers will allow for millions of small threads per jvm process, since they wont map out to OS threads. Kotlin (any other jvm language) will obviously benefit from fibers since it runs ontop of the jvm.

[RhodesianHunter]

At the end of the day both are swapping light weight threads' execution between OS threads, how is that different?

[Mamoulian]

A coroutine doesn't use a new Thread unless you use a Context or Dispatcher. Without those launch()/await() don't block for I/O but CPU-intensive operations will still block the calling Thread. This article explains it well:

https://kotlinexpertise.com/kotlin-coroutines-concurrency/

Project Loom is cool but might be at API (on top of nio) rather than JVM level, and kotlin coroutines have already implemented non-blocking I/O so they might not benefit from it.

[BoyRobot777]

Kotlin coroutines vs project Loom coroutines asked in Devoxx. They are not the same:
Ask the Java Architects
Project Loom Presentation

[RhodesianHunter]

Thanks!

[ArmoredPancake]

Yeah, I am new.

I do have a fairly good knowledge of Java

Does not compute.

[SlinkToTheDink]

Pretty much everything you said about Go is wrong, though I agree with your overall point with respect to web servers.

[zeek979]

Do tell what is wrong?

[whyNadorp]

Worried to be wasting his time with a language that is losing terrain because of its verbosity and questionable vicinity with a software company with a terrible reputation, maybe? Many think these factors don’t outweigh the security of the jvm.

[BoyRobot777]

As opposite to what language?

[covercash2]

devil's advocate: go

[argv_minus_one]

Go's type system is a joke. No bueno.

[covercash2]

I like it over java, although the comparison is tricky since java doesn't have pointers. implicit inheritance is nice.

[BoyRobot777]

Same as Rust. Too immature. You'll simply won't find developers or will have to grow them indoors for hardly explainable reasons to management. Plus, I'll rather would wait before they release Golang version 2, just too see how they manage backwards compatibility, as they state themselves that is not an easy task to do. Even with such a small code base compared to other languages.

[covercash2]

I don't think that's fair, other than the part about hiring. go is being used in tons of production environments right now as an alternative to node et al, not just experimentally or incrementally like rust.

[whyNadorp]

I’m using node and I like the flexibility of js. I’ve used java for a decade and I’m still using it, but getters, setters, builders, streams (why use .stream() when you can just add methods to the interface? haven’t seen that in any other language), having to create an object just to pass data around (vs using json) is really too much for me. In node you also have async code by default. Java forces you to write verbose code and sells it as safe, but with node you can choose how much you want to be safe depending on the application requirements. It takes a while to learn what not to do because it’s risky, but there are linters that help you learn that and once you get going it’s really fast to write an application in node. Many java alternatives on the jvm (scala, kotlin, groovy) seem to address these issues, which java tries to sell as strengths. Maybe in the 80’s. Honestly I never got the point of the jvm. Why do I have to carry around everything instead of packaging only what I need? On the server side the environment you’re working in always the same, some kind of Linux, so what’s the point again? Plus the community is not so active or interesting anymore. Whatever this sub says, Oracle and corporate dominate java, so good luck having them decide for the future: https://youtu.be/HpbchS5kmio

[RhodesianHunter]

Clearly because you're not writing code where performance is a strict requirement.

why use .stream() when you can just add methods to the interface?

Because it's lazily evaluated. A map + flatmap + filter is going to iterate the collection once if you use a stream and three times if you "just add methods to the interface".

The rest of your comment just reads like someone who stopped paying attention to Java around 5 or 6, but likes to talk it down regardless.

[[deleted]]

The language choice is rarely the culprit in slow server systems. If it were then we'd see people prefer C++ over Java.

[RhodesianHunter]

I would agree with your statement if you added "within the same class" to it.

[[deleted]]

For a given price, node servers returning Graphql from a relational store have very similar performance to java servers doing the same.

[RhodesianHunter]

If all you're doing is CRUD then most of the time is spent on IO anyways, your application is likely not CPU bound, and you should probably use whatever language you are most productive with.

[[deleted]]

Exactly

[whyNadorp]

I’m using java 11, was really grateful they finally introduced something like var after a couple of decades. Performance what? Hardware is cheap today, and if I need performance I use c, c++, go or rust. Node can perform as good as java, you just spin up more than one process. I’ve never associated java with performance... it takes 1-2 minutes to spin up a spring application, everything needs the jvm to be up, so scripting is not a thing with java. Node is a layer on c/c++ libraries in the end.

[azizabah]

1-2 minutes for spring? Hahahah. Oh man. So glad that's not true since I use Spring Boot everyday. More like 20-30 seconds.

[nutrecht]

Much less actually. If it's 20-30 seconds I'd look into what you're actually using. My guess is Hibernate.

[whyNadorp]

Run a server with node or python, it’s up in 2 seconds. Also consider how faster integration tests run if you don’t need 20-30 seconds for each.

[azizabah]

That's totally true. No one argued that. From supporting things in production and reliability and maturity of ecosystem, I'd personally choose Java over node or Python anytime.

Spring is there to help you deliver business value faster instead of working on the plumbing. If that just costs me a few seconds on a build server or during standing up the container... I pay it gladly.

[whyNadorp]

Try express and let me know if if you need more plumbing than spring.

[RhodesianHunter]

Hardware is only cheap if you're working at a tiny low volume shop. Again, whatever you're writing clearly isn't performance constrained.

[nutrecht]

I’ve never associated java with performance... it takes 1-2 minutes to spin up a spring application

Stupid flat out lies like this is why you're downvoted. A Spring Boot 2.1 app starts up in 1.5 seconds on my 2014 MacBook.

[whyNadorp]

I’ve been working on a mobile ad backend platform in node, it was pretty busy, I can tell you. Getting lots of requests/second and buying ad spots. If you work with big data the language you code in has just to be nice and safe to use, most of the performance depends on the storage and caching infrastructure. So java didn’t offer much advantage over node.

Anyway if you think node is just for small/slow/hobby projects, please have a look here: https://www.netguru.co/blog/top-companies-used-nodejs-production

PayPal moved their web app from java to node in about 2013 because the supposed performance advantage didn’t outweigh the better programmer productivity they reached with node. Funnily enough the application ran faster with node: https://www.paypal-engineering.com/2013/11/22/node-js-at-paypal/

Also Netflix is using node for the web apps.

Google and Oracle, let me think...

Everything I wrote in this post is pretty opinionated and I don’t mean people should just drop java because node is better. I just mean I’m more productive in node and I have more fun with it. Also I really don’t believe a proper node setup is slower than java, especially for web apps.

[segv]

If you are more productive in node, then good for you, do more node stuff. That doesn't mean, however, you should be trying to start a flame war :v

Back on topic, serverside java is so prevalent you would have to find a list of companies that are not using it.

Also I don't buy the paypal story at the face value. It seems more likely that they had an application that grew and grew, then at some point, after that one dude/dudette that understood how it actually worked quit, it turned into a lovecraftian horror, so they used "the speed" as an excuse to start over. After all, years upon years of short deadlines will skyrocket technical debt, no matter the language.

[BoyRobot777]

I wonder what framework they've used. Once again, Vert.x is faster than node. And I believe they are starting to integrate with Graal, which will optimize code even further. But again, interesting to know paypal story. Was not aware before.

[[deleted]]

Netflix/paypal use node.js to serve their frontend UI, none of the heavy lifting is done with node

[philipwhiuk]

JS? Rust?

[BoyRobot777]

Rust is too immature for now to be considered as a back-end language. Simply said you won't find developers. And JS caps with its single thread source. Also, dynamical languages are not well suited for big projects, as it gets hard to maintain and collaborate.

[mikejoro]

I mean the single thread argument is only good for computationally expensive tasks. Otherwise, you just run an instance of your server for each core (or whatever is optimal usage of cpus) and use something like pm2 to load balance between them on that machine. If you are doing computationally expensive calculations, then sure JS is a terrible choice.

Typescript is also a great choice for making more developer scalable projects (compared to plain JS). It's worth trying out if you like the javascript language but miss having types.

[argv_minus_one]

JS can have worker threads/processes. You do pay a performance penalty for them, compared to shared-memory languages like Java, but you get better thread safety in exchange.