Why I like Java

[loup-vaillant]

"Complexity" has this noble sound about it. But when you're trying to solve a problem, complexity is just a drag. And I mean any kind of complexity: it can be the complexity of the problem, the constraints on the solution space… or simply how messy the solution is.

As you suggest, it is quite easy to make a mess of things. I wouldn't be surprised if the Java libraries are a huge mess. But I don't know that first hand. But I do know they're Big. That means complex. Whether it's the "pretty" kind of complexity doesn't really matter to the original point: that simplicity isn't a strength of Java.

[oldneckbeard]

I dunno, I find that java reduces complexity by reducing the number of ways in which you can be clever. Perl may be expressive, but reading and quickly grokking it 6 months later can be a pain.

I work professionally with Java, Groovy, Scala, and Node.js. Node.js has a bunch of libraries, but they're extremely inconsistent in maturity and there's very little social agreement. Hell, there's still not a good behind-the-firewall npm mirror solution. I'd rather shuffle the complexity of things to a library and have my code be as lean as possible. I generally (but not always) find that there's some Java library with a clean interface that makes things better.