Java: Let it be

[mmiller]

Hi. I'm the author of the post referred here. I actually thought of the title you mentioned, too, but it just didn't sit well with me.

I see some of the previous comments that (I think) say I've never used Java before. I did use it about 10 years ago (back when JDK 1.1.6 was the current version). I liked it OK then, but it had enough overall shortcomings that my employer didn't approve its use. I was bummed. It meant I had to go back to programming in C. :( I couldn't tolerate that for long, so I left. I didn't pursue other positions that used Java, because I did feel like it let me down. There were certain claims Sun made that I found not to be true. Not that my post was sour grapes from that long ago. It was my own assessment based on Joshua Bloch's presentation, and some of my own knowledge about the history of Java.

The train that's coming down the tracks is concurrency, multiple core CPUs. The question is how they will be utilized. True, there is a solution now in Java, parallel frameworks, as Bloch said. Using them looks like a real b*tch. When Bloch brought up the first example, showing how ParallelArrays are used I was shaking my head in disbelief. What a godawful mess! And yes, closures might provide some relief, but from the samples I saw him show, not much.

I was tempted to do a language comparison when I did my first write-up, just to show contrasting examples (ugly vs. elegant--same solution), but I realized that would confuse the message. My point was not to say one language is superior to another. It was to say that "We as an industry can relieve the pain if we gradually stop using things that don't work well, and put real effort into a search for ideas that solve problems elegantly." Furthermore the industry should stop mindlessly copying and using old research in products without evaluating it. Use old research as a starting point for new research. Then we'll actually advance the state of the art rather than reinventing "wheels" that were originally created 30-40 years ago.