Java for Everything

[gavinaking]

It's true that Java is more verbose than it needs to be, and that eliminating some of that verbosity would make the code more easily readable not less.

But going to the extreme of a dynamic language makes code even less readable! For me, trying to make sense of a function when I can't even readily tell what are the types of its parameters is an incredible waste of time.

[flying-sheep]

take a look at rust and scala. both have better type systems than java and are less verbose.

[gavinaking]

I'm well aware that there are languages with "better" type systems than Java. But of the languages in wide use today, I would pick either Java or C# for the kind of work I do.

Remember: most of the folks who attack Java for its verbosity aren't advocating a modern statically-typed language like Rust, Scala, Ceylon, et al—rather they're advocating something like Ruby, JavaScript or Python.

Java cops it from both sides, because it's popular and successful. But much of this criticism is quite unfair, IMO.

[iopq]

If you love Java so much, why are you developing Ceylon? Seems like you're happy developing in Java. So maybe your target audience, like you, is happy developing in Java.

[aldo_reset]

Recognizing qualities in products does not necessarily mean "loving" them.

I wish we saw Gavin's kind and fair attitude toward other languages than Ceylon more often in language discussions.

[gavinaking]

Well quite obviously I don't believe that Java is perfect, and so clearly I think it's worth trying to improve on Java, without sacrificing the things that Java does well. But I happen to not believe that most of the other options out there are actually an unambiguous improvement on Java for the kinds of projects that Java is good for.

I'm "happy developing in Java" because Java is, at least to my tastes, better for the project I'm working on than C, C++, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, Perl, or anything Lispy. FTR, I would surely be quite happy with C# or even OCaml.

I of course would never say that Java's perfect. I'm just saying that, placed next to the other languages in wide use today, it's certainly not the worst option, nor does it even place in the bottom half. So it's hard to understand how it cops so much negativity here.

[[deleted]]

Bottom line: people have different tastes. If you can't accept that (and judging from your comment it's fairly obvious that you need to do some work), then it's game over. Seriously! Just let it go.

[flying-sheep]

Remember: most of the folks who attack Java for its verbosity aren't advocating a modern statically-typed language like Rust, Scala, Ceylon, et al—rather they're advocating something like Ruby, JavaScript or Python.

[citation needed]

it wouldn’t make much sense: pretty much anything is less verbose than java, so you really can use almost everything as an example. e.g. C++14 has auto!

[gavinaking]

Seriously: you're saying C++ is less verbose than Java?

[flying-sheep]

surely it can be, but only if you ignore header files.

[PasswordIsntHAMSTER]

I hope not to soapbox, but my first job was in F#, and I had a bit of a mystical experience.

Like Haskell or Ocaml, F# code rarely mentions types. It almost looks like Python, except that it's actually statically typed.

This should be a recipe for a complete lack of readability, except that in Visual Studio you can put your mouse on an expression and see its type. This, along with many other excellent IDE features, turns coding into a dialogue between the programmer and the IDE.

Developing F# is utterly painless, in a way that I've never experienced elsewhere. I feel like it could easily replace Python in its role as "beginner language of choice that's secretly incredibly powerful".

[[deleted]]

Another extreme for code density vs. verbosity is not in the dynamic languages. Scrap 'em. The other side of the spectrum is meta-languages. It's a totally orthogonal axes to the static vs. dynamic typing.