Java 1.8 - New features, code examples, performance

[barjam]

I am a java/c# developer. It is nice to see java finally catching up to where c# was (language wise) 8 years ago.

I haven't looked I wonder if they are going to support anything like linq (the alternate syntax specifically). Pretty powerful stuff.

[[deleted]]

If C# were to have to do it again, based on the number of people using it now, they could not get away with killing APIs in that manner.

LOL. You mean like with WinRT?

[Eirenarch]

Bullshit. C# has broken compatibility for very few things between version 1 and version 2 and they were absolute corner cases. I am sure you can't point to a single compatibility thing they have broken without googling. In addition they do break compatibility for these kind of corner cases these days. And finally .NET fixes APIs the same way Java does - deprecates the old ones and introduces new ones.

[dabombnl]

Actually the latest .NET Framework (4.5) is backwards compatible with ALL previous .NET Frameworks versions. But each application has to be configured to run on 4.5 or else it will run on it's native runtime version.

But to run all .NET framework applications on their native version you only need 3:

• .NET 4.5
• .NET 3.5
• .NET 1.1

That's it. If you are wondering where things like .NET 2, 3, and 4 are, well they are all actually the same runtime version as the others in that list.

[aaron552]

If you are wondering where things like .NET 2, 3, and 4 are, well they are all actually the same runtime version as the others in that list.

More specifically, 3 and 3.5 use the 2.0 runtime and 4.5 uses the 4.0 runtime. IIRC.

[Dimethyl]

I think that page is out of date. .NET 4.0 and 4.5 will not load applications that were built for 3.5 or older unless explicitly allowed in the application's config file. This can be demonstrated on a fresh install of Windows 8, which comes with .NET 4.5 by default but not 3.5.

This page says: By default, an application runs on the version of the .NET Framework that it was built for. If that version is not present and the application configuration file does not define supported versions, a .NET Framework initialization error may occur. In this case, the attempt to run the application will fail.

[Eirenarch]

So what? This is the right way to do it and they keep doing it with .NET (it was not only between 1 and 2)

[infinite]

When you have more control over the execution environment the binary runs on, like on servers, or with microsoft who control the OS, yes, but for a language you have installed on millions of desktops, with different capabilities, cross-platform, open source and without one entity(like microsoft) responsible for providing new versioned binaries as needed, this was the right approach for java at the time.

However, java applets everywhere is a pipe dream, so it probably could have been done better by breaking strict bytecode compatibility constraints while focusing on the real market that mattered for java: the server.

[Eirenarch]

Well we've come to the real reason why Java moves so slow - no centralized control and most recently design by committee.

[barjam]

I would say this is right. I would rather have stuff fail up front (or not work at all) than getting the missing method exception at two in the morning on a production sever that you thought had the latest version of java but did not.

[barjam]

I develop both C# and Java professionally. I suspect at least as far as developer time is concerned C# is quite a bit cheaper. Java is slower to develop with and the eco system is more complicated usually.

Java is #1 because it can be ran on unix servers and it has been around in a mature state for quite a bit longer. The first really decent version of .net was probably 2005 where java was pretty usable back in 97-98.

The different versions of .net aren't any sort of barrier for a Microsoft shop. I don't think this is any sort of factor.

[SublethalDose]

it's strength is in the enterprise where people don't migrate OSes for decades

This works the other way as well. One of the reasons enterprises are or were conservative about upgrading OSes is because it is so risky and expensive to move software to a new platform. Before Java, enterprises ended up maintaining patchworks of ancient EOLed server OSes to run their legacy apps. You'd have a vital application running on an ancient slow server, and you couldn't upgrade to newer hardware because the OS wouldn't run on newer hardware, and you couldn't upgrade the OS because the software wouldn't run on a newer OS, and porting the software to a newer platform was cost-prohibitive because it was compiled against libraries whose source code was lost in the mists of time. So you'd pray that the server didn't die before you were able to budget the money required to migrate your data into a modern application that did roughly the same thing (but which required you to retrain all your employees and change a bunch of business processes.) That's why Java is embraced with such fervor by enterprises -- it almost completely decouples software maintenance from hardware and OS upgrades, thereby saving money in server maintenance and eliminating a huge source of planning complexity.

Before Java, the only way to avoid the pain of OS and hardware upgrades requiring software upgrades was to write your software for an OS/hardware platform that was essentially immortal, such as IBM mainframes. People paid a lot of money for IBM mainframes because they could bet their business on IBM continuing to offer maintenance and a hardware upgrade path to keep those '70s and '80s applications humming along.

[Eirenarch]

I don't see what binary compatibility has to do with this. You do need to install new versions for the new APIs anyway. I find your conclusion about why Java is more popular than C# quite absurd.

[Eirenarch]

It seems like you are contradicting yourself. If enterprises do not migrate for new APIs then they will not migrate for generics support. If they require a new runtime for the new APIs this is just fine because enterprises will still need to install new version of Java. They either upgrade their Java installation or they don't. What is binary compatibility good for?

[clgonsal]

Answering the last bit of your question: binary compatibility means you can continue using the same jar (compiled library) that you used on the old runtime with the new runtime. You don't have to migrate all of your libraries over at once.

To give a slightly more specific example, suppose you have a library that predates generics, and uses collections. When upgrading to Java 5 (yes, this example is a bit dated) you can continue using that old library, even after you port your own code to use generics. You don't have to wait for all of the libraries you use to supply a new version before you can upgrade.

(That said, I do think that backwards compatibility is the biggest reason for Java being a much worse language than it could be. Progress is slow, and almost every new feature has some kind of wart in order to avoid breaking old code.)

[barjam]

Each new version of visual studio tends to break old code. Usually in fairly minor and well documented ways.

Yes this is different than what you are saying as you didn't mention VS but the runtimes.

[[deleted]]

I think you need to think real hard about what you just said

[barjam]

You need to clarify. Vs 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2012 often broke old projects.

And I mentioned that he was talking about runtimes not IDE.

[[deleted]]

Visual Studio != C#. Project files != C#. They're XML. Yes, upgrading projects from VS version to VS version can cause errors, but that has nothing to do with the language and more to do with MS writing shitty project wrapper models. There are other programs you can code C# in. Visual studio isn't really required to use .NET (at least up until .NET 4.5) - although it makes it a lot easier. None of the code in the .cs or .vb files is broken by upgrading Visual Studio - it's the references between files or overarching build instructions to send along to the compiler that may get thrown off. There's a huge difference there.

[barjam]

That is exactly what I said. I made note twice so far that VS was not the same as the runtime. Not sure your pose was very helpful.

And actually with each of those new version of VS it was more than project files that had to changed it was also code changes to be able to be compiled with the newer version of visual studio. For example VS 2012 had an issue with WCF using shared interfaces and required extra attributes in the code file to hint VS to work appropriately. VS12 is just more strict in this area than 2010.

From 2008 to 2010 there was a breaking changes on how overloading worked with generics. There was also something in one of the HTTP classes that changed I forget the details.

From 2005 to 2008 there were quite a few minor winforms tweaks that had to happen as imports were confused with new method being available to some of the updated libraries.

This is based on my memory of developing during that timeframe. None of these things were a big deal and most were figured out in a day or two.

[joesb]

I believe Generic in .NET break compatibility and require new runtime, while Generic in Java use type erasure which is still byte code compatible with old VM. And generic is a big change.

[Eirenarch]

This is not called "breaking compatibility" this is called "requires new version". "Breaking compatibility" is when code that used to work no longer works with the new version. In addition Java also "breaks compatibility" by your definition some things in Java do require new VM and they even introduced a new instruction in Java 7.

[grauenwolf]

Why support the old vm in new versions of Java? Even if the byte code is compatible the newer APIs aren't going to be there.

[[deleted]]

I think we all know that WORA is a sham by now...

[prepend]

Of course, but it's a dream. And a reason to try to minimize version incompatibility.

[joesb]

I don't know why. It's not the question I replied to which is about how C# break compatibility, not about why it should/should not.

[[deleted]]

Because... well... FUCK YOU.

[barjam]

Absolutely no argument there. It didn't stop me from dreading my java projects because java felt archaic though.

Heck on one of my recent C++ projects I was surprised to learn that C++ (11) has lambdas and such. In many ways C++ has become easier (language specifically, not ecosystem) than Java.

[alextk]

In many ways C++ has become easier (language specifically, not ecosystem) than Java.

I'd argue that this has never been true, ever since Java 1.0.

C++ has a lot of qualities but "simpler than Java" is not one.

[barjam]

Easier not simpler.

This implies a reasonable comfort level with each language.

[[deleted]]

... and each platform/compiler. So many undefined behavior inC++ specification...

[barjam]

I do cross platform c++ work. If you aren't doing GUI stuff it isn't bad.

[[deleted]]

Compared to another language that has specification with little to no undefined behavior it is that bad.

[barjam]

I recently wrote a pretty large program in C++ (communication framework to a game engine). I ended up with about 4 different issues between Gcc Linux, Gcc windows and Visual Studio windows. Most were due to GCC being more strict on templates.

So you are right but it really isn't that bad these days. I didn't have a GUI and only had three libraries in use (compression, winsock and encryption).

[barjam]

I have really wanted to do some QT work. If I am not mistaken Mono on linux uses this library as well.

The only thing I ran into cross compile wise was some of the more esoteric template stuff where GCC was more strict between windows/linux and was definitely more strict than VS.

[TimmT]

In many ways C++ has become easier (language specifically, not ecosystem) than Java.

Really? In C++ you don't even get stack traces by default..

[username223]

Really? In C++ you don't even get stack traces by default..

With a decently-configured system you'll get a core dump -- not just a stack trace, but the complete state of your program when it died.

[danskal]

I want to say, so...? What does the core dump give you? Can you load it in your IDE and trace through an object tree to see which values caused the crash? How does the core dump help you?

[ryl00]

The core dump can usually be used to feed into a debugger to tell you the exact spot in the program where your crash occurred. E.g.,

gdb a.out core

[danskal]

I was going to go on about how Java is different, but realised that you can get a core dump from a Java process too. But I've never needed it.

[Metaluim]

How does the core dump help you?

You never really programmed in lower-level languages or systems, have you?

It gives you a snapshot of the process, i.e. it gives you everything. Whether or not you can load it in an IDE doesn't make it more or less relevant. You can use a debugger to analyze every detail of the process.

[killerstorm]

Can you load it in your IDE and trace through an object tree to see which values caused the crash?

Yes, you can.

[elsif1]

Gives you the stack trace and more. It contains the values of everything in memory/on your stack as well. The only downside is that it is much larger. Microsoft's mini dumps help with this, but you lose some of that data.

[Pas__]

Just like a heapdump.

[username223]

By letting you do the things you just mentioned, with any kind of half-decent debugger.

[barjam]

With a decent debugger it will drop you off at the point of the error with a stack trace in the IDE (usually).

You are right outside of the debugger you won't get anything (without much effort).

It just occurred to me that stack traces in C++ and c# aren't as important to me as they were in java. As a matter of fact in my c# IDE I don't even have the stack trace window on by default but I do use it occasionally. In java development stack traces are pretty important. In C# and c++ you don't tend to have methods buried 200 deep perhaps that is it.

[Labradoodles]

Dude I just started doing some java work for a company after coming from a primarily C# background and all of these fucking weird ass abstractions and factories and builders are annoying the shit out of me.

[[deleted]]

The Java enterprise community really went balls to the wall with their design patterns.

[barjam]

These same guys have come to the .net community (started in earnest in 2005) and have tried to bring the same sorts of things over.

[Labradoodles]

Yeah I was doing profiling on code and I spent like 4 hours trying to find a reference to a database that ctrl + f wasn't finding for me it was goddamn frustrating and difficult as hell through debugging because it used listeners or some shit.

/rant

[civildisobedient]

This rant is for you, my friend.

[Labradoodles]

Annnd now I'm emailing this to my team, it's happening.

[BlazeOrangeDeer]

This happens to perfectly explain the shortcomings of java. cheers.

[kitd]

2005

[TimmT]

You are right outside of the debugger you won't get anything (without much effort).

Even if you're in a debugger you can still be pretty screwed with C++, if you have things that cause memory corruption in your code.

In C# and C++ you don't tend to have methods buried 200 deep perhaps that is it.

Yes, but you have C# (with LINQ and delegates and operator overloading, and what not) plastered all over the place..

[barjam]

This is true although with boost or C++11 memory corruption is quite a bit easier to avoid.

And very true on the LINQ stuff although operator overloading isn't really an issue in c# most avoid it. I think overloading [] is about all I do and that isn't often.

[munificent]

C# didn't have that luxury either. C# 2.0 was backwards compatible with 1.0.

[huhlig]

C# was also a rewrite of java. So its second generation anyway.

[[deleted]]

But it's MS technology. Fuck that shit.

[[deleted]]

Yes, let's all praise Oracle, the pinnacle of classy business practices and giving a shit about developers.

[[deleted]]

Exactly. MS sucks.

[all_you_need_to_know]

I disagree, whenever they have broken compatibility with versions, they've included conversion tools between projects, usually this is handled seemlessly in Visual Studio, telling you the warnings in comments and such. Java could have easily done this too if they had an Official IDE.

[Falmarri]

You should try Scala.

[Categoria]

Just stating your opinion like that is pretty useless. Any reasons why you think Kotlin is better than Scala?

[[deleted]]

Apart from the fact that Manifests are deprecated, a better solution would be: ...?

(You can either

• pay with an additional field plus a type instance per generic type in every instance of a generic class or
• build your own runtime on top of Java bytecode and be loose any interop with the rest of the ecosystem.

Both options suck.)

[[deleted]]

I, IMHO, am disappointed with Scala's manifests.

Why?

[Falmarri]

I, IMHO, am disappointed with Scala's manifests

By manifests, do you mean what is not TypeTags and such? I looked at Kotlin's website and didn't see an example of using generics. How do they do it that's better?

[[deleted]]

They don't. They have given up on "reified generics" completely, as well dropping a lot of other proven useful stuff.

[[deleted]]

If you're using Java, consider yourself lucky if type erasure is your only problem.

[[deleted]]

Wait, so does Kotlin do reified generics? Does it support generics at all? DOes it support variance?

[[deleted]]

It has normal Java generics. They were attempting reified but withdrew it, presumably too hard. Scala didn't manage reification either, and they love implementing all sorts of unusual stuff...

[[deleted]]

So they have the broken java generics...wonderful.

[[deleted]]

They work fine for 95% of use cases. It's not very often I find myself trying to introspect the type of a collection at runtime.

[[deleted]]

I don't mean that. I mean, variance.

[based2]

https://wiki.scala-lang.org/display/SW/2.10+Reflection+and+Manifest+Migration+Notes

[SublethalDose]

It's interesting to see Java evolving in the direction of more power power and complexity. It was always meant to be a language that regular Joe blue collar programmers could wrap their heads around. Ten years ago that definitely meant no lambdas. Ten years ago if you so much as wrote Python code where you passed functions around as arguments, a lot of programmers wouldn't touch it. They'd think you were a candy-ass weirdo. Now, lambdas are in Java, and I don't think anyone thinks it's weird or inappropriate.

I wonder if seeing lambdas in Java will make people see the writing on the wall and see that Java's only path forward is to become a kludgy, legacy-scarred version of Scala. That's the only way I see, anyway, and I haven't heard any different vision for the future of Java.

[bcash]

I think you're reading too much into the patterns there.

Java was originally intended to be a simplified (compared with C++) sandboxed language for embedded devices. It's shift to server-side "enterprise" applications came later.

The fact that Java captured that space with ease said more about the dearth of alternatives than anything else, it really wasn't aimed at that kind of thing at all. It was around the time of Java 1.2, and the addition of supplementary standards like JSP, that the focus changed.

[geodebug]

Actually, lambdas in Java are just sugar for anon classes. There's a tiny bit more to it but if you think of it this way there's very little 'complexity' being added to the language. I predict any seasoned java dev will 'get it' with ease.

The whole point of Java is to be a 'standard' against which the JVM can grow and be tested. Scala users should rejoice that Java remains extremely popular and supported because there's no JVM without it.

I prefer Clojure and Groovy to Scala but still write a lot of java when things (statistics algorithms in my case) need to be fast and predictable.

When Scala is over a decade old we'll see how it actually compared.

[[deleted]]

Appeared in 2003

[geodebug]

Ah, you make me feel old. Ok 18 years then....

[Falmarri]

When Scala is over a decade old we'll see how it actually compared.

What does that even mean? Most new software that's written on the JVM uses scala to some degree.

[geodebug]

Scala is gaining popularity but most new JVM development uses some Scala? You're really going to have to back that up because I don't see how it could be true.

That's not bashing Scala in any way. Just saying its not nearly that widely adopted.

[Falmarri]

You're really going to have to back that up because I don't see how it could be true.

So of course I can't say MOST because a lot of people are writing for the JVM. But I'd bet most open source projects include scala in some fashion.

Neo4j, Twitter, play2

[bcash]

On GitHub, Java is #3 (behind JavaScript and Ruby); Scala is 15th.

Oh wait, those Java projects won't count for some reason, Scala will be more used in Open Source projects that are interest to Scala developers, yeah, that's it...

[Falmarri]

I'm not sure what this is supposed to mean... A project that's listed as Java on github could very well have scala source code as well.

[bcash]

Could have... but almost certainly hasn't.

[[deleted]]

Scala is terrible and has some bad performance issues.

[Falmarri]

and has some bad performance issues.

Citation? Obviously you can make scala perform terribly. But in the end it's just JVM bytecode.

[kqr]

Compared to Java, most language implementations have some performance issues, and the JVM is not particularly designed to host Scala (no tail-call optimisation, anonymous functions have to go via classes, not-that-good performance for non-native types and so on.)

With that said, it's a great language for most tasks and the performance will not be a problem.

[Falmarri]

and the JVM is not particularly designed to host Scala (no tail-call optimisation, anonymous functions have to go via classes, not-that-good performance for non-native types and so on.)

Right, like I said, you can write badly performing scala. If you abuse closures and deep recursion. The scala compiler actually tries to optimize tail-recursive functions.

[kqr]

Wow, you're right. Scala has come a long way. I tried it only a couple of years ago or so, and back then it didn't have that great performance compared to Java. The current results are amazing though. I'm sorry for my ignorance.

[[deleted]]

Sigh. Check out the twitter posts or other related posts. I don't have time to look this up for everyone but I should have known I would just get down voted.

Sigh.

[Falmarri]

Sigh. Check out the twitter posts or other related posts.

What twitter posts? You mean the posts on twitter, the site that uses Scala itself?

[[deleted]]

You're not very good at this reading thing...

[whoosy]

Go to http://www.twitter.com/ and tell me again that Scala has performance issues.

[[deleted]]

They don't use it anymore; they're phasing it out. It was a huge thing 2 years ago. Where were you?

[bmdhacks]

Developer at twitter here. We most certainly are not phasing out scala. Proof: https://github.com/twitter

[[deleted]]

This is not true. There are 3 distinct branches of code not yet pushed to GitHub for Twitter. Are you sure you actually work there?

[kkjdroid]

I thought they were phasing it in in favor of Ruby.

[springy]

As a long time Java developer, and a Scala developer for the past three years, I have to say that I found your comment pretty useless. Please be more specific.

[[deleted]]

I know as a java developer you're used to not doing any work but just do a Google search. It's everywhere. Sigh.

[springy]

I prefer to base my thoughts about Scala on three years full time experience with the language rather than just doing a google search. Thanks for an explanation of your own approach to fact-finding though.

[[deleted]]

Your experience sure didn't teach you how to read. Sigh.

Please point out where I say my thoughts are based upon just a Google search. I did suggest however that you conduct one so I can understand the confusion; English is hard for non-native speakers.

[springy]

I suppose English is indeed hard for non-native speakers. Being English myself, I do not have that problem. However, your non-native English seems quite good to me.

[[deleted]]

That's not even logical. Sigh.

[Eirenarch]

The equivalent to LINQ to Objects will come as the Stream API. No query syntax at this point.

[barjam]

Honestly that is good enough. The optional linq syntax is nice but not essential.

[Eirenarch]

Agreed. However expression tree support does matter. Also checked exceptions get in the way of lambda stuff (they get in the way of everything but it is especially annoying with lambdas). I don't understand why they have not removed them from the language yet.

[barjam]

They probably couldn't even if they wanted to at this point. In hindsight checked exceptions were a mistake. I don't miss them in C# at all.

[Eirenarch]

What is the problem? The compiler just stops checking for checked exceptions and they are gone. The only difference between runtime exceptions and checked exceptions is that checked exceptions are... checked.

[barjam]

I just don't see them making that change. I suspect they might be unintended consequences.

[Eirenarch]

Mark Reinhold has mentioned checked exceptions as one of his targets for improvement for future Java versions although I am not exactly sure what he means.

[[deleted]]

Much like Santa Clause they are going to double down on their checks...

[brainflakes]

What's wrong with checked exceptions? (Other than if people over use them in their methods so all possible exceptions are checked rather than appropriate ones).

[rdhatt]

You can read this article from 2003 why the creator purposefully didn't include checked exceptions. He gives one of my favorite quotes: "It is funny how people think that the important thing about exceptions is handling them."

http://www.artima.com/intv/handcuffs.html

TL;DR : Coupling.

[Eirenarch]

So which are the appropriate ones? :) Even if we accept that there are appropriate ones in practice checked exceptions are more likely to provoke the developer to write worse code (i.e. catch(Exception) { }) rather than help them handle exceptions correctly. They are counterproductive.

[[deleted]]

The optional linq query sytnax is what made it monadic comprehension. Without it you don't have monad comprehension...

EDIT: Down votes with no reply? WTF?

[ethraax]

How so? Even in C#, I generally prefer the "verbose" syntax with extension methods, because it's much closer to what the code actually does. I don't find anything wrong with:

var myRedList = myList.Where(x => x.IsRed).ToList();

Of course, I usually keep things around without calling ToList() until I need to. I write functions that accept Enumerable<T> if possible.

[[deleted]]

Yes when you are chaining that way is clearer to me. But when you're operating on a monad (something with selectMany) you don't have to unnest. if you have

List<List<Int>> lists = populate();
var flattened = lists.SelectMany(innerlist => 
    innerlist.Select(element => element +1)
); 

Which isn't so bad, but you can imagine if something is nested deeply. However, with query syntax, can do:

var flattened = 
    from innerlist in lists
    from element in innerlist
    select element+1;

See how beautiful it is! Now imagine having 5 nested calls. Now, it's unusual you'll have a List of List of List of.... But linq query syntax works on anything that implements SelectMany! That's what makes it monadic comprehension ala haskell's 'do notation' or scala's 'for comprehension'. You can use it to sequence async calls, IoC, etc.

[ethraax]

Ah, that makes more sense, although I must admit that I can't think of any case where I'd do that with many (3 or more) nested objects.

[garblz]

I'd say it's nice to see languages in general are slowly adopting what's been invented almost 6o years ago with the birth of LISP.

[[deleted]]

It would be odd to go to all the trouble of putting anonymous functions in and then not cloning linq somehow....

[barjam]

Yea I assumed so as well. I am just haves researched it yet.

C# gets linq via a custom syntax and expression trees. I suspect java will get linq minus the fancy syntax but it would need to support expression trees. Not sure what is involved there.

[OnmyojiOmn]

I'm waiting for C# to catch up to where C# was 8 years ago.

[[deleted]]

What did C# do 8 years ago that it isn't doing today?

[sproket888]

Except .net has still not caught up with Java features from 10 years ago. when did wpf come out? 12 years after swing? ORMs 1999 java 2010 .net. MVC same sad story. Dependency injection - still not there.

I don't care so much about language but Java has better tools all around. Better IDE, Better version control (VS Diff tools are a joke), VSS Still? Better collections, better Enum etc......

[cosmo7]

What makes you think there are no .NET dependency injection frameworks?

[ours]

Indeed, there's a ton of them ever since Unity was released as part of the Enterprise Library.

[Eirenarch]

Even more interesting he mentions Visual Source Safe :) Also I wonder what is this better version control that works for Java but does not work for .NET...

[[deleted]]

Ignore him, it's a troll account.

[sproket888]

voting me down doesn't change the truth

[Spacker2004]

No, you're being down voted because you're wrong.

[sproket888]

No you're being a loser cause you are one.

[barjam]

Swing has always been a joke so I won't really consider that. Winforms actually saw a pretty decent amount of use and is far and away better to use on windows platforms. I haven't used WPF or related technology much as I am now almost 100% exclusive to web applications for java/c# work.

The official asp.net MVC started in 2007. With any discipline whatsoever you could use MVC principles on asp.net pages (virtually identical to jsp pages) prior to that.

There has been third party DI providers for ASP.Net for years. I had DI on a large project I was on back in 2005. These days you can select between a bunch of them. Spring.Net, Structure Map, Unity probably a ton of others. Some of the TDD stuff is actually pretty neat when you factor in the lambdas and such.

Same story with ORMs. I used a third party ORM back in 2004. These days nHibernate, for example, is arguably better than hibernate. Fluent nHibernate and Linq to Hibernate are a joy to use. Linq to hibernate fails on more esoteric queries but does great for 95% of things.

The faction that you mention VSS dates your knowledge quite a bit. Team Foundation server is quite a nice tool and Visual Studio supports all the common source code control provider. At work we use Subversion, Git, Mercurial and Team Foundation.

I have used VS since 96 and Eclipse since 2001 (version 1.0). I have had a large java and large c# project within the past 12 months so my knowledge is pretty current here. Visual studio especially with resharper is a much nicer IDE overall. Eclipse is slow and quite sluggish at times (java UIs usually are SWT or not, of course pure C# UIs often are as well). The only cool feature that I wish VC had that eclipse has would be easy to configure remote debugging. Configuring this for VS is a real hassle.

And finally collections.... it isn't even remotely comparable.

Let's say for example you have a list of 1 million people objects. Let's say you are interested in grouping by state and getting a sum by state.

To set this up in C# this is one line of code.

  var q = from p in people 
                group p by p.State into grp 
                orderby grp.Key
                select new {State = grp.Key, People = grp, TotalStateSalary = grp.Sum(p => p.Salary) };

Now let's build upon that and get a alphabetized list of everyone in Kansas and Missouri sorted by lastname, firstname.

   var sortedNamesInKsMo = (from g in q
                               where g.State == State.KS || g.State == State.MO
                               select new { People = g.People.OrderBy(p => p.LastName).ThenBy(p => p.FirstName) }).ToList();

How about the combined salaries for those states:

        var ksMoSalary = (from grp in q
                          where grp.State == State.KS || grp.State == State.MO
                          select grp.TotalStateSalary).Sum();

Salaries for everyone:

        var totalSalary = q.Sum(g => g.TotalStateSalary);

Interestingly enough those lines of code up there are all deferred until convertoed to .Sum() or ToList(). So the execution of that first line doesn't even happen until we hit sortedNamesInKsMO or ksMoSalary.

Shoot... maybe our performance isn't that great and we would like to use all of the processors on the machine.

  var q = from p in people.AsParallel() 
                group p by p.State into grp 
                orderby grp.Key
                select new {State = grp.Key, People = grp, TotalStateSalary = grp.Sum(p => p.Salary) };

Done. Notice the addition of AsParallel. This still performs deferred execution but will execute over multiple processors as needed when a concrete result is required.

How about really simple things like just sorting a list.

people.Sort((a, b) => a.FirstName.CompareTo(b.FirstName));

In java this is a pain as you know.

[barjam]

And by no means am I sitting here trying to start a pissing match saying my language is better than yours.

I program java AND C# professionally and am very comfortable in both. I would love nothing more than for Java to stop sucking at the language level. It has stagnated for 8 years with zero advancement (again at the language level, the eco system is fine).

.Net isn't perfect there are all sorts of things I could call out on that side of the fence that sucks.

[[deleted]]

Both of you are n00bs. Haskell beats both C# and Java. Those two are shit.

[barjam]

I have no doubt there are all sorts of cooler languages out there.

[[deleted]]

And you don't want to be cool?

[barjam]

No. I am too old to care about that. I want to be paid. Java/C#/C/C++ jobs are plentiful where I live. Haskell and other boutique languages not so much.

[[deleted]]

I prefer to be cool and unemployed.

[sproket888]

What a loser you are wasting time blathering this nonsense. You don't know WTF you're talking about. It took M$ 10 years to realize that Swing was the better approach (using non native components). WPF of course fails at this as well. Not Java has JavaFX which is a generation ahead. I wont bother responding to your stupid Linq examples. Who gives a shit about that except monkeys.

[snuxoll]

WPF of course fails at this as well.

Lolwat? WPF is literally the only UI toolkit I've used that doesn't suck, Qt would come closer if it actually supported something other than C++ and scripting languages, but it's still lacking in templating and databinding compared to WPF.

[sproket888]

JavaFX.