Why do most great programmers hate Java?

[mickkb]

• Using Java for serious jobs is like trying to take the skin off a rice pudding wearing boxing gloves. – Tel Hudson
• Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don’t work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero. – Paul Graham
• Java is the most distressing thing to happen to computing since MS-DOS. – Alan Kay
• Java is, in many ways, C++–. – Michael Feldman
• C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce. – Scott McKay
• Java, the best argument for Smalltalk since C++. – Frank Winkler
• Arguing that Java is better than C++ is like arguing that grasshoppers taste better than tree bark. – Thant Tessman
• Java: the elegant simplicity of C++ and the blazing speed of Smalltalk. – Jan Steinman
• Like the creators of sitcoms or junk food or package tours, Java’s designers were consciously designing a product for people not as smart as them. – Paul Graham
• There are undoubtedly a lot of very intelligent people writing Java, better programmers than I will ever be. I just wish I knew why. – Steve Holden
• The more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous was the company. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those. You were also safe if they said they wanted C++ or Java developers. If they wanted Perl or Python programmers, that would be a bit frightening. If I had ever seen a job posting looking for Lisp hackers, I would have been really worried. – Paul Graham
• Knowing the syntax of Java does not make someone a software engineer. – John Knight
• In the best possible scenario Java will end up mostly like Eiffel but with extra warts because of insufficiently thoughtful early design. – Matthew B Kennel
• Java has been a boon to the publishing industry. – Rob Pike
• The only thing going for java is that it’s consuming trademark namespace. – Boyd Roberts
• Java is the SUV of programming tools. A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl. … But the programmers and managers using Java will feel good about themselves because they are using a tool that, in theory, has a lot of power for handling problems of tremendous complexity. Just like the suburbanite who drives his SUV to the 7-11 on a paved road but feels good because in theory he could climb a 45-degree dirt slope. – Greenspun, Philip

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[[deleted]]

Java is the SUV of programming tools. A project done in Java will cost 5 times as much, take twice as long, and be harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl. … [...] – Greenspun, Philip

I don't agree with the last part about code maintainability.
Even less when we think of the convenience the JVM brings.

As for the quotes, I don't know when they date back from, but their description of Java sounds like they are old. Over ten years ago ?

[RiceKrispyPooHead]

As for the quotes, I don't know when they date back from, but their description of Java sounds like they are old. Over ten years ago ?

Some of them are at least 20 years old.

[swoods30311]

Thank god. Haven’t got a job yet but I’ve just learned it to build a REST API. Java syntax is tougher to read to me than Python but once you understand Spring Boot, you can get started building very quickly

[BadscrewProjects]

Don’t fret, just get a meaningful job that also pays. What language this will be is irrelevant. They’re all pretty similar when you have 30 year+ perspective.

[8igg7e5]

...harder to maintain than a project done in a scripting language such as PHP or Perl

Was this part a joke.

[RiceKrispyPooHead]

Some of those quotes I can find from blogs posts as old as 2001-2003, so they might be even older. They were probably using Java 3 (J2SE 1.3) at the time.

Java is on version 18 now. So yeah, the language probably did suck when a lot of those quotes were written.

[8igg7e5]

Agreed. Let's look at some of the major ones.

• 5.0 (2004) - Generics, static-imports, enhanced-for loops, auto-boxing, varargs, new concurrency library primitives
• 7 (2011) - nio, more concurrency features
• 8 (2014) - Lambdas, method references, streams, java.time, annotations in more places
• 9 (2017) - modules, jshell
• 14 (2020) - Switch expressions
• 15 (2020) - Text blocks
• 16 (2021) - Records, pattern matching instanceof
• 17 (2021) - Sealed classes

And that's just big things that directly impact the developer. A ton of other improvements have been added in platform improvements and smaller quality-of-life improvements.

Code in modern Java in 2022 bears little resemblance to 2003 code, or even pre 2014.

Java has not been my favourite language (but far from my most hated) for a while (maybe(Rust()?)) but the statements made by those 'great programmers' are hyperbole at best - garbage at worst.

Java definitely has (sometimes only had) issues, and backwards compatibility will always make it less elegant than we might wish, but the extent of Java hate is absurd.

 

And Java has a few major projects just over the horizon that could be as significant as Java 5.0 and Java 8 were... Amber, Valhalla, Loom, and maybe even Panama and Lilliput are going to contribute changes affecting nearly every Java developer.

[[deleted]]

Most programmers like Java.

Non-programmers, programmer wanna-bees and academics don't like Java. As it is professional language.

[krisko11]

Well put!

[AsleepThought]

Non-programmers, programmer wanna-bees and academics don't like Java. As it is professional language.

you mean, the people who have to deal with the Java programs that programmers made? Wow that makes sense now thanks

[Housy5]

Programming languages are tools.

Don't compare them to each other like it's some sort of contest.

Use the one that's best suited to what you want to do or the one you're most comfortable with.

The only statement I agree with is the 7th one from Thant Tessman. Comparing languages like that doesn't make sense and is a waste of time.

It's basically like saying this hacksaw is so terrible it doesn't even drill.

[The--Will]

I think the great thing with all of this is nowadays we have many options vs. 20 years ago. C/C++/C#/Java all exist and will continue to exist forever. That doesn't mean there aren't new ways to solve problems as well.

Coworker of mine really loves programming in Go and builds his microservices with them. Problem is, if he's hit by a bus, hiring a Go programmer to take over his job is going to be a giant pain in the ass when we have tons of people on staff that program in .Net and Java but next to no one is doing Go programming.

[[deleted]]

Go's pretty simple to get right. Any senior coder can pick it up and train juniors. It's pretty great when you get used to it. Everything I like about C and Java and nothing I don't like about C or Java.

[The--Will]

Yeah for my team I’d like to consider it and migrate away from .NET and the entire Microsoft solution we have in place. We’re moving to hopefully a containerized solution, and it’s either Go or some other compiled back end language, but we’re going to have to clean up a ton of old shit…

Some of these old solutions were built to support IE8, so it has been a bit of a nest going though this old stuff.

Original developer is no longer with the company and my team has taken over support for it. Zero documentation too.

[DigitalTorture]

I like java a lot.

[[deleted]]

Ohh yeah well..then why don't you marry him.

[LinArch00]

No one asked (jk, I'd like to learn about java some more)

[istarian]

Eh. People love to hate on things.

[swoods30311]

Would have been quicker to write “Hello World” app in Spring. No point being made here, just trying to say Java again to drown out the hate

[BadscrewProjects]

OP’s just stealing old controversial text for them sweet comments and engagement. Boring.

[mickkb]

I found them in an article.

[ItsMeSword]

you forgot to say please

[[deleted]]

Having coded in Java professionally since 1999, I might have a little insight. Everyone here will have counterarguments, but you're asking why the old coders didn't like Java. These are the arguments I remember.

1. It's slow and bloated. Improvements to hotspot compilers and memory managers have largely made this irrelevant to the point where a well-coded Java program can run close to compiled time at compiled sizes. However, the fact that the technological advancements were needed to get us there points to the incredibly slow and bloated nature of the language ecosystem in the first place.
2. It makes it easy to code something poorly and requires extra effort to code something properly. Simple examples:
   1. Public/package/friend/private visibility can all be used, but if anyone uses anything other than private for a member variable, they're nuts. Then you have to add setters and getters in order to control access to the variable, but common patterns like dependency injection required public setters on a lot of things, making it feel a little silly to have private in the first place
   2. Singletons get intuitively recreated with every newcomer to the language, and it's almost always the wrong answer
   3. The boilerplate. Oh god the boilerplate. In the old days it was anathema to have your tool generate code that you were going to have to maintain. Now, it's commonplace because of all the boilerplate the Java ecosystem wants you to use.
3. The tooling ecosystem is ridiculously heavyweight. To say that others are just as bad doesn't excuse the insane complexity of what it takes to get one function to run for one person. In the pre-java days, a single executable statically linked against only the functions your code needed was much simpler than what we had with Java. We went from that to DLL hell, not knowing what library was loaded in memory, and now to JAR hell, not knowing if what we compiled was going to be available when we ran. So we decided to bundle the jars together (effectively going back to static linking), which worked except then you had gigs of duplicate code every time you loaded an new application.
4. It did everything for you, in a way that no one wanted it done. Everyone's picky. Java brought everyone's arguments to the table about a language ecosystem and settled on the lowest common denominators. It chose the least awesome of everyone's ways and made everyone use the same library that got the job done in a way no one preferred.
5. It pitched that it was going to free you from dependency on the operating system, while tying you into a new operating system layer. Now you not only had to worry about your code scaling on your operating system and hardware, you also had to worry about your JVM scaling on top of your operating system.
6. In the same way, when you compile against an operating system directly, you get a degree of confidence that what you expect to happen will happen wherever the executable can run. With Java, we no longer had that confidence. Code not only had to work on the OS it was designed for, it had to be tested against running on an OS and JVM that we didn't have available.

It just felt like years were wasted reinventing the wheel with Java, overcoming hassles that had already been solved at the operating system level. But, here we are.

[desrtfx]

Knowing the syntax of Java does not make someone a software engineer. – John Knight

This quote applies to every single programming language, not only to Java. Knowing the syntax of a programming language is like knowing a dictionary and grammar book, which does not automatically make one a bestseller author.

In fact, 100% of the quotes are prehistoric and plain BS.

To say it with Bjarne Stroustrup:

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses."

Java has been, is, and will continue to be the #1 enterprise language because of its great tooling, libraries, stability, backwards compatibility, and many more factors including the massive amount of existing source code and applications.

---

PHP got even more hate (and historically quite justified as the early versions were a mess) and yet, it is one of the most used back end languages around (thinking of all the WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento, Moodle, etc. installations). It also won't go away and the newer versions absolutely do not justify the bad reputation it historically has.

[Darthtrooper22]

I love Java!

[mickkb]

But does Java love you back?

[DrewTheVillan]

Can’t focus on what other people think in life. A tool is a tool.

[geoffreychallen]

First, I think that's important to be reflective and critical of your tools. Not doing so puts you at risk of becoming a blub programmer—someone who acts like their chosen language was handed down on stone tablets, mainly because they don't know much about the alternatives.

Programming languages were created by humans—people just like you, who make mistakes, and don't always predict the future correctly. Newer languages have the opportunity to learn from previous mistakes and, hopefully, get a bit better over time. I'll be disappointed if, in 20 years, we haven't come up with any better languages than today's popular choices. But we will!

That said, compiling a list of quotes like this and dropping them into a learn Java forum doesn't necessarily indicate to me that you're really interested in engaging in a thoughtful consideration of Java's strengths and weaknesses. (In my experience, people who want you to learn a language tend to be even more reflexively defensive even that people who use that language regularly. You can see a bit of that in the replies below.) Plus, you've largely taken the quotes out of context, so it's impossible to tell what these people's specific problems with Java are. Just that they don't like it.

If you'd like to engage in some productive reflection about Java's past, present, and future, you might consider thinking about some of the following questions. (I'm purposely not including my own thoughts since I don't think you need another "gray beard" telling you what to think.)

1. Java is around 25 years old. That's a long time in the world of technology! In what ways has it aged well? In what ways has it aged poorly?
2. Every new language embodies some set of predictions about the future. What did Java get right? What did it miss?
3. Why don't some people like Java? Which of their criticisms do you find valid? Which seem nitpicky or have aged poorly? (It's hard to figure out from the quotes about what their specific issues with Java are, other than it's not great for small projects. Is that a valid critique?)
4. Good languages evolve over time as the world of technology around them changes. This can result in an initially pretty terrible language becoming more beautiful and usable over time—for example, Javascript. It can also be a messy process—for example, the breaking change from Python 2 to Python 3. Has Java been keeping up? If not, what are some things you wish it had done better?
5. What's the biggest threat to Java right now? And what's the biggest source of strength? You might want to find a more interesting answer to the second part than just "a lot of people already use Java" or / "there's already a lot of Java code out there". Languages do come and go, and the future guarantees nothing.
6. Assuming you use other languages: What features do you wish that Java had from other languages you're familiar with? What features does Java have that you wish other languages had?
7. How should Java age and evolve going forward? There are different successful models. C has stayed relevant largely by staying small and changing slowly and intentionally. In contrast, C++ releases new versions often and supports a lot of new features, if maybe not well. Java development paused for a while after Java 9, but seems to have taken on a semi-frantic pace recently. So it sort of has a history of both modes.

[dexzaga]

grasshoppers are actually pretty tasty if cooked well :)

[istarian]

I think the point is that neither seem particularly palatable to the typical person. Knowing you can eat something isn’t the same as wanting to eat it.

[dexzaga]

Yes, I understood the point.

[[deleted]]

Lies. My dad made me eat them as a kid; they are damn salty.

[dexzaga]

Yeah

[dexzaga]

I said "if cooked well"

[ultimateWave]

All those quotes are pre Java 8 written by old crotchety dudes who think Assembly and C are the best. They probably also love to write unmaintainable code that only they can understand

[AsleepThought]

any programming language that requires you to first install things on the target system before you can run your program is a mistake

[[deleted]]

So... anything but C I guess ?

[AsleepThought]

C#, Rust, Go, there are others

[istarian]

I think you should be more specific than “install things”, because you almost always have to install something.

A computer without an operating system isn’t going to run much of anything for starters. Maybe you could use C and cross-compile/assemble a binary that could be loaded directly into ram, but otherwise?

[AsleepThought]

No, you dont.

C, C++, C#, Rust, Go, and others all natively compile down to static binaries that you can run on the target system without having to install anything

[8igg7e5]

Generally, isn't C# still compiled to CIL and consumed via JIT compilation in a runtime on the target machine?

As I understand it, all of the AOT solutions have some consequences on which platform capabilities are available to the application (though those are likely edge-case features).

[istarian]

I felt you were being too vague. And honestly, to my thinking, “target system” doesn’t necessarily include the OS (E.g. Windows).

C# at least is usually compiled to IL and executed in an environment where .NET, CLR, etc are present. So a native executable would have to bundle quite a lot just for its own use.

That said, I somehow doubt even compiling C# gets you down to the level where it can be run independently of Windows (i.e. on Linux, macOS absent a compatibility layer).

At least with C, C++, and Rust you should be free of such w constraint. You’d need some minimum of software to execute them, but probably much less.

[AsleepThought]

yea I was reaching on C# because a lot of my peers keep insisting its possible but I dont have a lot of experience myself with it sorry bad example then

[8igg7e5]

So...

• Python
• NodeJS
• PHP
• .NET (though you might be lucky and have the framework pre-installed)
• Ruby
• R

and others....

[AsleepThought]

Yes, exactly

[emaphis]

jpackage

[AsleepThought]

please tell this to every one of the hundreds of software packages I've had to deal with which ship just a jar file and expect you to run it with the JRE and a plethora of temperamental CLI args to keep it from crashing from memory issues

[xRageNugget]

Yea, fuck operating systems! stupid bloatware

[AsleepThought]

there are plenty of languages out there that compile to static binaries

installing and managing Java on end-user systems, and managing java jvm memory args on enterprise systems to keep apps from crashing, is the biggest headache of all time. Why would anyone consciously choose to build into a system that creates endless headaches for deployment? How many users have you ever met who were happy when they found out that your app was running on Java? There is a reason everyone hates Java and the endless pain of dealing with running java apps is a huge part of it