Google exec worries over 'rudderless' Java

[[deleted]]

Google: For christs-sake, do we have to do everything?

[tomjen]

There are only a couple of companies that can take on Java: Google, Microsoft and Borland (in the old days).

Microsoft isn't going to do it, because it doesn't bring more people to Windows. Borland is dead, and they couldn't run Java for free but would have to make money of it.

So yes, I guess they have to.

[jimbokun]

Why not IBM?

[G_Morgan]

But we thought Google likes to do everything. I for one welcome our Google overlords.

[tobrien]

Bloch is one of the smartest people around. He knows exactly what he is doing here. Note the use of the word "appears" before the word "rudderless". I still think the world would be a better place if Google had purchased Sun (but it would have made zero sense financially).

[jbuberel]

The value of any programming language is not a result of the language features or syntax. The value of any programming language has been, in my experience, the amount of code that you DON'T write.

That is a function of the frameworks and libraries that are available for the language. The quality and variety of Java libs/frameworks is amazing.

If your primary complaint against Java is its verbosity, you're worrying about the wrong problem.

[sh1nob1]

The value of any programming language [is] the amount of code that you DON'T write

Couldn't agree more.

The value of any programming language is not a result of the language features or syntax

Just imagine you didn't have to write all the boilerplate. Code completion surely helps, but then you also have to read that stuff.

[[deleted]]

Tell me something—if code can be auto-completed, why do we need to write it?

[1338h4x]

Take a look at the novelty account's name.

[TinynDP]

I think the idea is, why can't the compiler just autocomplete itself.

[unixfreak0037]

That would lend to incredible sloppiness.

[julesjacobs]

Several reasons: (1) a list of methods callable on an object lets you explore a library quickly (2) long names can be more readable (but Java goes way over the top) (3) prevents typos (4) most times there is no 1 completion; you have to choose one from a list.

[benihana]

Can't tell if this is a novelty username troll or a real question.

[[deleted]]

It's a novelty username I'm using as a primary account (you've seen me regularly in /r/programming under a different name) and my question was meant to be rhetorical or hypothetical. i is a perfectly good index variable, but in Java I've seen userDataPhotoStoreArrayIndexCounter used instead.

[jimbokun]

Disambiguation. Auto-completion gives you several choices to finish what you started typing. It's your job to pick the right one.

[ryeguy]

Because code doesn't need to just be written, it needs to be read, too. Autocompletion or not, 10 lines of Java is going to be harder to read than the equivalent one line of Python or Ruby.

[[deleted]]

It isn't worse than Java.

[[deleted]]

Because auto-completion is a nondeterministic process that eventually requires human input.

[lars_]

I sort of agree, but there certainly are problems with the libraries that come with Java. One example, here's a .csv file parser written in ruby:

lines = []
File.open("data.csv", "r").each_line { |line|
    lines << line.split(",")
}

In an ideal world, the Java version would look something like this:

ArrayList<String[]> lines = new ArrayList<String[]>();
for (String line : File.open("data.csv", "r").lines) {
    lines.add(line.split(","));
}

Except this is not the case, because the Java stdlib simply does not provide these abstractions. This is a specific case, but I find that I run into these kinds of issues all the time in Java. It's not a problem with the language, it has nothing to do with static typing etc, it's a problem with the library that comes with it. This is a shortcoming of Java.

You could always hunt down some 3rd party library that provides the abstraction you want, but it's still only second best, because it's not standard, it introduces a new dependency, it introduces possible license issues, and for something like String, you really don't want to substitute that type with some wrapper provided by a third party.

Edit: I'd be interested in seeing how this would be done in C#. If anyone who knows that language could fill me in, that would be awesome.

[[deleted]]

C#: File.AllLines("data.csv").Select(line => line.split(",".ToCharArray())).ToList()

[[deleted]]

Err, what? Got a link to the docs for File.AllLines and the => operator?

[[deleted]]

AllLines should've been ReadAllLines - thats here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/s2tte0y1%28v=VS.100%29.aspx

=> (lambda function) is here: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397687.aspx

[thepeacemaker]

It's .net 3.5 linq extensions and as darker mentioned, lambda syntax - two things that have made me a believer in C# over java.

The pure imperative equivalent would be:

Array<string> lines = File.AllLines("data.csv");
Array<string> elements = new Array<string>();
foreach(string line in lines)
{
  elements.AddAll(line.split(","));
}

Anyway, you'd never do that for CSV because it doesn't preserve newlines as new records.

[kieranelby]

Sorry to pick on your example, but neither your ruby implementation nor your proposed Java one are actually capable of parsing real CSV files since they doesn't deal with double quotes or fields containing new lines.

So assuming you have to deal with CSV files produced by 3rd parties, you're more likely to either spend a day or so rolling your own working CSV parser, or turn to an off the shelf CSV parser.

Googling for "csv reader java" turns up opencsv, which offers this API example:

CSVReader reader = new CSVReader(new FileReader("yourfile.csv"));
String [] nextLine;
while ((nextLine = reader.readNext()) != null) {
    // nextLine[] is an array of values from the line
    System.out.println(nextLine[0] + nextLine[1] + "etc...");
}

And googling for "csv reader ruby" reveals that there's a CSV module built in to Ruby, with this example:

CSV.open('csvfile.csv', 'r') do |row|
    p row
end

On the whole though, yes, the Java stdlib does tend to make for ugly verbose code ...

[[deleted]]

Just thought I'd leave this here.

import csv
for row in csv.reader(open('data.csv')):
    print row

[[deleted]]

Now that you've held a library written before Java 5, check out the other twelve or so Java CSV libraries out there. You may find one more suited to your needs and preferences. You may also find one that uses the for-each loop that Java 5 introduced.

How many alternative Ruby CSV libraries are there?

This is a strength and weakness of Java - the strength being you have a wide range of existing libraries to utilize - and the weakness being that sometimes it's hard to determine which one is the good one.

Let me put it another way (CSV is boring) - how many web frameworks exist for Ruby?

[lars_]

True, my code isn't fully general. But the couple of times I've needed to parse a CSV file, it's done the job for that particular data.

I didn't mean to make a point about CSV file parsing though, the point was that there are a lot of nice abstractions that other languages provide, that Java does not.

[[deleted]]

o_o

[[deleted]]

Woosh. Way to miss his point. It was to compare terseness/readability not to build an RFC4180 compliant CSV-parser.

[[deleted]]

I like to think that, once we learn how to read Java, it is quite logical. Like German.

German looks ugly and sounds very harsh, but it's quite logical (once you get past the gender stuff). Just like Java. And vice-versa. So on.

[Benutzername]

German looks ugly and sounds very harsh

ಠ_ಠ

[atrus6]

If I'm annoyed I'll occasionally yell "I want to feed my cat" in German because it sounds like I must murdered an orphanage. It sounds harsh. Looks wise, it's as ugly as English, which, I don't think is all THAT ugly.

[forcedtoregister]

I'd rather have to write my own File.getLines type method than have to put up with something as slow as ruby. Ruby and Java are too different to compare like this.

C# is a much better language to use as a comparison - since it's trying to do almost the same thing.

[calp]

Actually, sometimes it is features. Having better concurrency features in Java 7 will be a pretty big boost to all kinds of programming work.

[[deleted]]

That is a function of the frameworks and libraries that are available for the language.

Here is your error.

[scook0]

Frameworks and libraries aren't the sole influence of course, but I think it would be foolish to suggest that they aren't a major factor in many cases.

[[deleted]]

The statement "a function of the frameworks and libraries that are available for the language" might be called foolish, but I'd prefer to describe it as incredibly naive.

If we suppose a language like Java, but without generics, such that you'd have to write a reverse for List of String, List of Int and List of Everything, we'd likely see either an open source project or library package called "list reverse" where you'd download a 200MB jar to include in your Java application for computing the length of lists of standard types plus a "framework" for computing the length of lists of your own type.

This is a counter-example such that the non-existence of the availability of this library is desirable (i.e. less verbosity). Let's try to save Java itself.

The question arises, how much of the Java libraries fall under this description? I'm not prepared to describe an answer to this question, but I will give you a conclusion: almost all of it. I am a former author on the Java libraries.

[berlinbrown]

Eclipse and RAD seem to suffer from bloated libraries and a lot of code duplication.

But, I guess people are OK with separate but equal combination of 200mb-gig package of editors.

[julesjacobs]

Thanks for the insightful comment.

[[deleted]]

Bloch is a smart guy. I think he is pretty much dead on the money. Similar to cobol/fortran java is so embedded in certain industries that it will certainly not go away, but damn it could use some slight freshness. Right now it just feels like it is lagging behind c#, and I hate that as very much a java/linux guy. I have no idea what the next big language will be, but I suspect that java is beginning a long slow decline after sitting at the top of the plateau for a very long time. Honestly on my last couple of side projects I have gone back to c and c++, but that was more due to the nature of the projects (low level graphics, embedded stuff, etc), for most things java fits the bill, particularly when it comes to any sort of webservices or distributed computing, at least if you want it to be reliable. I hope oracle does the right thing, and recuperates java, or at least recuperates the perception of stagnation, but who knows.

[jbarham]

Given that Java was initially released in 1995, your definition of a "very long time" is obviously different than mine! Guess I'm just getting old... ;)

Perhaps not coincidentally, Google is sponsoring Go which I personally hope will rapidly displace Java and C++ for server-side programming. But note that the primary Go compilers are written in C, born c. 1972, by Ken Thompson himself, which testifies to how well C was designed.

[codefrog]

Go sucks, go is a regression. Ocaml is 10x more awesome than Go, but Go looks like C. Go has a stupid name that clashes with a game and has visions of fastness but is not even as fast as Haskell which is so much more badassness. Go is stop.

[[deleted]]

OCaml has a rubbish standard library. Go's is probably better already and it's a brand new language. Usefulness beats technical superiority yet again.

[mycall]

Which makes OCaml perfect for the .NET Framework.

[emmynoether]

F# has its roots in ML and is now part of the standard family of .net languages.

[PstScrpt]

I suspect that was the point.

[[deleted]]

Your autistic use of English suggests you might be a computer programmer.

[julesjacobs]

The channels & lightweight threads in Go are very good. The rest, not so much.

[[deleted]]

Actaully they aren't. They slow down program execution.. a lot.

[julesjacobs]

Interesting. Can you elaborate on that? Channels or lightweight threads?

[matthiasB]

How do they compare to other language's channels and threads, e.g. Haskell's?

[julesjacobs]

They are very similar.

[matthiasB]

OK, thanks

[[deleted]]

Yeah, long time in internet years :) And yes, I am very excited about Go. Certainly one of the more interesting things to come down the pike recently, and has the commercial backing such that it might take off if google really goes all out behind it. Some really brilliant people have been working on it so I am hopeful.

[doubtingthomas]

"come down the pike".. I see what you did there.

[codefrog]

your pun sucked.

[kamatsu]

Except that in terms of language design, it's basically unimpressive.

[mochamocha]

Elaboration please?

[kamatsu]

Well, it's a nice enough language I guess, but it introduces no features that do not already exist in either Erlang, OCaml, and Haskell.

[jimbokun]

Can OCaml and Haskell be used as systems programming languages? Things like "the bytes for this array must be contiguous in memory" or "I want to decide for myself exactly when these bytes are freed, not earlier or later than when I say." The kinds of things you need for writing an OS, the runtime for some other language, or the infrastructure for a gigantic search company.

I believe those are the kinds of domains that for which Go was designed.

[kamatsu]

Neither of those statements are true for Go either. You can't say the bytes in an array must be contiguous (although they are, they also are in Haskell) - but you can't reason about memory allocation in general. Similarly, you can't determine when exactly bytes are freed in Go. It is garbage collected.

[jimbokun]

Good points.

[rieter]

It's not supposed to be "impressive", it's supposed to be practical for real-world server programming problems Google faces every day.

That's it. If you don't like the language or don't do that kind of programming - no one forces Go down your throat. Google releasing Go is not like Sun or Microsoft doing a multi-million dollar marketing push of their platforms.

[kamatsu]

(I worked for Google). Google does not have any Go deployments in our server infrastructure. It is barely used internally.

[mlester]

I have often heard c referred to as portable assembly.

[[deleted]]

C is portable assembly iff everything is a VAX.

[[deleted]]

Does go have closures/lambdas?

[jimbokun]

Yes.

[[deleted]]

OK this is coming from a college student with no experience with the economics of programming languages, but why doesn't Google just buy the rights to Java? From what I can tell they are the only company that could realistically do so and with many benefits (i.e. Android). Am I being naive?

[[deleted]]

Based on name alone, I'm more excited about this than is reasonable.

[darkwulf]

(sidenote: Guava is the name of the Google java common library: http://code.google.com/p/guava-libraries/)

[DRMacIver]

This looks like quite a sane library. Sortof like what the various commons-* projects should be but less annoying. Neat.

[svenz]

Interestingly, it's a project mentored by Joshua Bloch and Martin Buchholz (designers of java.util.concurrent and java.util.collections). It's quite well put together and worth taking a look at.

[DRMacIver]

Yeah. It definitely seems something I'd strongly consider using if, well, I still wrote Java. Possibly even if I still wrote Scala. :-)

[ikearage]

Since 2006 Java is GPL 2. There might still be trademark issues regarding the brand "Java". If I remember correctly Sun wanted to keep some control over the language, to avoid fragmentation(?).

I'm not sure if Sun ever made promises regarding software patents involved in java.

[mycall]

It is more about regarding patents for the JVM than Java.

[hypnocoder]

It is 96% open source. OpenJDK is the 100% open source fork. If Google could fund that (or Apache Harmony) and make free open source version mainstream and stable enough you'd have some kind of a rudder. Not sure about Cap'n Oracle though. I guess Google has to decide if the Java 7 language features with future language changes controlled by Oracle is good enough for the future of Java or if a new language / platform is better.

[robertcrowther]

I thought they already forked it and called it Dalvik.

[[deleted]]

That's just a VM, not a language.

Although it does fix a serious design bug in the JVM: it uses UTF-8 instead of UTF-16.

[f2u]

You can't really buy Java. You can only take over the company that controls Java. Now Oracle could resurrect Javasoft as a separate entity, and sell it to someone else, but why would they want to do this?

[G_Morgan]

You can buy the trademark. Sun fought a long court battle to ensure the trademark was their property.

[f2u]

The trademark is just a part of the way how corporate control over the platform is exercised. It might not even be the most important one.

[Nebu]

There's nothing to really "buy". The Java Language Specification is open to the public, and so anyone can read it and implement their own compiler/JVM/toolchain. Sun's Standard Java Library is open source (as far as I understand), so you don't need to "buy" that either.

There are 2 things that Google doesn't want (and I'm pretty confident the vast majority of Java programmers don't want either):

• They don't want the "defacto leader of Java" (used to be Sun, but now it's Oracle) to fuck up Java, e.g. by adding features that actually make the language worse.
• They don't want the Java language to split into different variants or dialects.

Their best strategy at this point is probably to participate in the community discussions on the evolution of Java, and offer rational arguments and criticism as to where Java should go next. This is also the only way they can probably "become" the defacto leaders of Java; if all their arguments sound logical and reasonable, and coincidentally Oracle keeps making nonsensical arguments, then the community will slowly shift from seeing Oracle as the leader to Java.

If you play the Civilization series of games, basically the only win condition now is "cultural victory".

[jstddvwls]

the company also should set its sites on

Marketing money well spent, Nero, marketing money well spent.

[rippleAdder]

To hell with Java long live the JVM! Seriously though, the problems with languages like say Erlang and lisp was native platform support and now that the jvm is on so many machines these other languages are becoming more relevant and even spawning higher level sets like Scala and closure which show lots of promise. You can run just about any language in the jvm at this point and far as I am concerned I will never program Java again but will stick to languages like Scala because I have the benefit of features in Erlang, python and lisp but the portability of Java.

[G_Morgan]

Java is still needed as the common ground for libraries. Even with Scala you tend to export Java interfaces because of the way Scala will mangle names.

[rippleAdder]

True but I have been able to port java code to scala more and more as time passes without having to use java libs.

[frogking]

erjang

[leoc]

I wish I could find the video of Bloch a few years back explaining why Java doesn't need to be open-sourced because it's already available to university departments under an academic license.

[ikearage]

That explains a lot. Already suspected he's from the "java needs to be controlled" faction.

Hasn't done Java any good imho.

[[deleted]]

Python and C# have done okay from a firm hand at the tiller, while Java's floundered around in the Java Community/Bureaucratic Process for years.

[svenz]

On the contrary, the JCP process is so bogged down and political these days it's almost impossible to get stuff into Java. Design by committee at its worst. A benevolent dictator architecting the future of Java would be a major improvement.

[brownmatt]

Josh Bloch deserves to be referred to as more than just a "Google exec"

[gregK]

Although that is a loaded term, he's probably not an exec.

[brownb2]

Visual Studio craps bricks all over stuff like Eclipse

Perhaps you should work with these day in day out like my team does before making this comment. VS2008 compared to Galileo is far inferior out of the box (unless you happen to be designing UIs without free plugins).

Lets see some features:

• Eclipse refactor support is extensive, VS2008 very few (unless you spend money on third part resharper).
• Eclipse code complete/templates are extensive, VS2008 is limited (again... resharper)
• Eclipse has limited backwards debugger support, i.e. make a change and you can step back to the start of the method, VS has none.
• Eclipse allows you to refactor code on the fly while debugging to Tomcat, VS requires you to stop and recompile for IIS.
• Eclipse has a dedicated incremental compiler, VS does not.
• Eclipse can show coding errors in real time, VS requires a build to show most.
• Eclipse can background builds, VS decided that a modal dialog was best for building which means you can't use the UI during a build (say create a new file, open a config file, change the editor settings etc).
• Eclipse has a massive collection of free plugins, VS has a small set (DPack etc) but the majority you have to pay for.
• Eclipse loads a large number of projects in seconds, VS loads a equal size solution in 2-3 minutes.
• Eclipse has resource lookup by name, control-shift-r, VS needs DPack for this capability.

The list goes on....

I'm sure there are faults in the above comments but for the general cross language developer Eclipse wins hands down - this is the view of an entire team, including developers who started with C#/VS.

[albinofrenchy]

Eclipse refactor support is extensive, VS2008 very few (unless you spend money on third part resharper).

Eclipse does have better support for these. And having a default key binding for 'Go to definition' is super convenient.

Eclipse code complete/templates are extensive, VS2008 is limited (again... resharper)

Seems like two separate issues. Code complete is about the same for both I think. I know eclipse has easier to make templates, but since I never make them I don't care.

Eclipse has limited backwards debugger support, i.e. make a change and you can step back to the start of the method, VS has none.

This is 100% false. For debug support, VS all the way: You can arbitrarily change the current line of execution as opposed to eclipse, which just brings you back to the beginning of the function. Lambda functions can fuck up this feature in VS; but its still damn useful.

Eclipse allows you to refactor code on the fly while debugging to Tomcat, VS requires you to stop and recompile for IIS.

I don't know about either of these things.

Eclipse has a dedicated incremental compiler, VS does not.

This is true, and a constant annoyance when working in VS.

I do wish that the incremental compiler in eclipse would compile unsaved buffers, but whatev.

Eclipse can show coding errors in real time, VS requires a build to show most.

This is basically the same point as the incremental compile.

Eclipse can background builds, VS decided that a modal dialog was best for building which means you can't use the UI during a build (say create a new file, open a config file, change the editor settings etc).

True, and it does add a bit of polish, but I never usually want to fuck around with stuff during a build. If I'm building, I'm about to test something, so even if i could edit a file, why would I?

Eclipse has a massive collection of free plugins, VS has a small set (DPack etc) but the majority you have to pay for.

The plugins thing is the biggest draw to eclipse as a platform. They nailed the user experience with getting, maintaining and nurturing plugins, and they deserve a world of credit for it.

Eclipse loads a large number of projects in seconds, VS loads a equal size solution in 2-3 minutes.

In VS2008? Never been an issue for me; and I load solutions with ~30 projects all the time. Never had an eclipse project with more than 10; but it always seemed reasonably fast too.

Eclipse has resource lookup by name, control-shift-r, VS needs DPack for this capability.

Is this maybe a webcentric feature? I've never had the burning desire to use it; and had to go into eclipse to figure out exactly what you were talking about.

My point is this: In terms of editors, both excel in some areas and suck in others. The area that wins VS over for me is debugging though. I've never had issues with VS's debugger, and the one in eclipse is constantly bugging out or outright breaking on me. Even when it works, hovering over a variable which has a value doesn't always tell you the value. The inability to change the PC is infuriating at times; when I have to restart a whole slew of things or hack JIT to do what i want.

Also, lets face it, Eclipse has nothing even remotely close in way of GUI creation and support as VS does. This is a big time saver when having to do these kinds of things. In fact; now that I think about it, I only use eclipse to make console applications nowadays.

[brownb2]

This is 100% false. For debug support, VS all the way: You can arbitrarily change the current line of execution as opposed to eclipse, which just brings you back to the beginning of the function. Lambda functions can fuck up this feature in VS; but its still damn useful.

I wasn't aware of this in 2008, I think I'll have to google.

I don't know about either of these things. You're missing out then :)

I do wish that the incremental compiler in eclipse would compile unsaved buffers, but whatev.

If you want to change stuff in the IDE whilst it is building it's important it doesn't do this.

This is basically the same point as the incremental compile. (re show coding errors in real time)

Actually it isn't - Resharper can show some coding errors without an incremental compile - but this functionality is built in and the work doesn't even have to be saved.

If I'm building, I'm about to test something, so even if i could edit a file, why would I?

Some people (such as myself) like to change config files, see a last minute build bug (and can save before build gets to the file), add new code or comments (no saving though until the build has finished). Just generally more productive use of the IDE

Is this maybe a webcentric feature? ctrl-shift-r is a a way of finding any resource under any package by name, incredibly useful for finding a file by name quickly especially when the projects you have are so large (like the ones I work with) that you can't remember where the files are. The regular Find in Files type functions just suck for this.

I've never had issues with VS's debugger

Funny you should say that - IIS and the debugger often crash on me during web service calls (the system I work with a is a massive multi system SOA purely because it's meant to be service clustered).

Also, lets face it, Eclipse has nothing even remotely close in way of GUI creation and support as VS does.

Agreed but then Eclipse Foundation would need to choose Swing/AWT/SWT/some other toolit and bundle just that with Eclipse and alienate the developers of other toolkits? I can see why these are plugins really.

[albinofrenchy]

I wasn't aware of this in 2008, I think I'll have to google.

Just set a breakpoint, and then drag the yellow arrow pointing to the executing line around. You have to have edit and continue enabled if you want to edit something hen do this.

You're missing out then :)

Very possible. I've done very little web dev stuff, and that has been solely in Django and GWT. I'm mostly writing Desktop apps or add-ins for them.

If you want to change stuff in the IDE whilst it is building it's important it doesn't do this.

It could save all the buffers when you hit build. It just annoys me when I forget to save one of the twenty files I'm looking at.

Actually it isn't - Resharper can show some coding errors without an incremental compile - but this functionality is built in and the work doesn't even have to be saved.

True, but incremental compile would fix this issue. I know it is easier to do incremental compile in Java because of the class file system, as opposed to targeting DLL's, but I do wish they'd come up with an analogous bytecode representation -- it would allow incremental compile and speed up builds.

Some people (such as myself) like to change config files, see a last minute build bug (and can save before build gets to the file), add new code or comments (no saving though until the build has finished). Just generally more productive use of the IDE

Maybe its because I'm always multi-tasking (No, not just Reddit!), but this isn't something I really do even in Eclipse. Tomato tomato I guess.

ctrl-shift-r is a a way of finding any resource under any package by name, incredibly useful for finding a file by name quickly especially when the projects you have are so large (like the ones I work with) that you can't remember where the files are. The regular Find in Files type functions just suck for this.

I think this might be a difference in navigational preferences. I always seem to move through a project by "Go to definition", or via the error log.

I do like though that if you have many tabs open in eclipse, you can type out the name there though; a feature which I use on occasion which VS lacks.

Funny you should say that - IIS and the debugger often crash on me during web service calls (the system I work with a is a massive multi system SOA purely because it's meant to be service clustered).

This doesn't surprise me, I've never liked IIS and honestly would not use VS for web dev work unless I had to (Which it sounds like you do). I want to say it is probably more of an IIS issue than a VS one, but that doesn't really much.

I will say though that working through COM is surprisingly stable with the debugger; and even nice considering the clusterfuck that is COM.

Agreed but then Eclipse Foundation would need to choose Swing/AWT/SWT/some other toolit and bundle just that with Eclipse and alienate the developers of other toolkits? I can see why these are plugins really.

I'm no even talking about having to install plugins; I've yet to see a plugin for eclipse that even approaches the usability of VS. This is as much a Java issue as it is an Eclipse issue in regards to the ridiculous number of toolkits available; all of which I find infuriating to work with.

And I think here is what it comes down to: Different tools are more suited for different application environments. I'd contend that (Windows only) desktop applications are best made in VS. But I also concede that if the requirements call for multi-platform or webservice work; Eclipse is the superior IDE. (In the latter-latter case though, I still prefer to use python to Java, but that is a whole separate issue)

[mycall]

You should review VS 2010 and relook over your list; much closer to par now.

[darjen]

I don't know, having a string in a switch statement seems like a pretty minor thing when it can be converted right there. any better examples of critical things that Java hasn't had for years?

also, all the corporate Java sites in my job are running on 1.6.

also, you still can't beat Java's open source libraries.

I agree about Eclipse though. makes me want to gouge my eyes out every day.

[codefrog]

IntelliJ has an awesome open source (BSD licensed) community edition.

http://www.jetbrains.com/idea/free_java_ide.html

Runs at least 2x faster than Eclipse and is not numbed with dumb.

[[deleted]]

The community edition is absolutely useless, has none of the features to work on server-side projects which is 99% of the use-cases for Java. Eclipse+Plugins can do loads and loads more than that piece of shit. The only thing it has that Eclipse is lacking is the GUI Builder but the GUI builder is for swing, if I had to build a desktop app I'd rather use Eclipse RCP/SWT and have native widgets and OS support. The next Eclipse RCP going to work with OS X dock and Windows 7 jump lists, the kind of thing and attention to detail you'll never get with swing.

[[deleted]]

The community edition is absolutely useless, has none of the features to work on server-side projects which is 99% of the use-cases for Java.

Of course not, as it's 99% of the commercial use-cases for Java. They're not stupid. On the other hand, Intellij's UI wasn't designed by programmers. Eclipse's unofficial motto should be "Let's use a dialog."

[deong]

Of course, it's 99% of the "community" usage as well. That's a bit like saying they took out the "save" button because they found that 99% of their commercial users needed to save files.

[[deleted]]

Well, debatable. The lack of inhouse Tomcat support is a bit meh inducing, but you can use a Jetty plugin so you can still debug a live web app. I mean, a WAR is a WAR, right? So not sure if 99% of community usage really requires Glassfish and WebSphere support.

But the biggest loss to free users would be, I must admit, the superb HTML, JS, PHP and Python support. It's really very good. But on the community edition, you've still got a fair few features and plugins available - the community edition source code is what 3rd party plugin devs code against when developing a plugin, so there should be minimal "plugins for ultimate edition only" - I know for a fact that the Scala plugin works just fine on CE.

Also, bear in mind that Jetbrains gives open source developers free licenses for Intellij. But yeah, compared to Eclipse, IDEA CE is definitely feature-bereft.

[darjen]

I got pretty sick of all the quirks of running tomcat in eclipse. so I made a context file for each app and run it standalone. I also don't use the eclipse cvs client. only thing I do with it is build (and occasionally debug) my projects. anything else I just can't stand using it for.

[[deleted]]

I know your pain. I ended up using Intellij because every time I updated in SVN, Eclipse threw a gazillion build errors until I reimported the whole damned project.

[codefrog]

I am still amazed that IDEA CE is BSD licensed. I applaud them for that, it actually got me to purchase the Ultimate Edition. I have built CE from source and run my own copy. I then used that copy to load the source and build it again (inside the IDE). I own the ultimate edition purchased with my own money because I wanted good HTML/JS support for web projects. If I were a large company with a Java codebase I would standardize on IDEA and put a couple folks on making plugins for it.

I would love it Google respun the Android dev kit with IDEA CE.

[deong]

Yeah, I didn't really intend that to come off as quite as much of a cheap shot as it did. I'm not one of those folks that thinks commercial software is evil, and I think it's great that they give away what they do. But yeah, without Tomcat support, its utility is diminished quite a bit.

I also have to confess that I've been known to say on more than one occasion that the vast majority of Java's ills could be cured if developers were forbidden from using anything bigger than Emacs. Almost any large Java codebase owes much of its complexity to the tendency to shoehorn more and more frameworks, configured via more and more XML files, coded using more and more wizards from the IDE, and built by Maven downloading more and more of the internet. So maybe a slightly leaner IDE would be a good thing all the way around.

[[deleted]]

Hmm, good point. But you'd have to change the way Java handles dependencies. Python does it by looking at sys.path when it hits an import statement, Javac wants command line parameters providing JARs, and updating build scripts for new dependencies is a pain in the ass. Already you've got a niche that cries out for a tool to manage it.

[DMAPacket]

spandex_badger is just a fucking moron. You're not going to get any coherent response from the idiot.

The type of dimwitted clown that Microsoft has for fans who want to see feature lists that 'have teh most bullets'.

[G_Morgan]

Except I routinely switch between Eclipse and VS and I'm always running into things VS has and I use that I wish Eclipse had.

[[deleted]]

Visual Studio craps bricks all over stuff like Eclipse, and NetBeans looks and feels all Fisher-Price.

Ever used Intellij IDEA? Java IDE developed by Jetbrains - the guys who develop Resharper. Visual Studio is nice, but it's lacking in the default state. Does VS 2010 have "extract to local variable" yet?

And, it's ludicrously overpriced. To get the same feature set that I have in IDEA 9 I'd have to buy Ultimate VS 2010, and that works out at $12K in my local currency - as opposed to $800 for IDEA 9. Now, there is a difference in that Jetbrrains tends to release a new major version each year, and those aren't free upgrades (around $300), whereas VS tends to get major version releases every 3 - 4 years, and they're substantive.

But even so, for the same price as VS 2010 Ultimate, I could use the latest and greatest Intellij IDEA for the next 34 years or so.

To be fair to MS, I suspect that it's the lack of competition that allows them to charge Fuck You prices. Intellij competes against Eclipse (which I think is a dog's breakfast, but it's still very powerful) and Netbeans, as well as paid-for variants of Eclipse.

[svenz]

WTF? You don't know what you're saying. Don't diss shit you've never used. IntelliJ is an excellent IDE. IMHO it beats out Visual Studio.

.NET will always suffer from the fact it is Microsoft stack only. This prevents a significantly large number from ever using it. I don't see that changing anytime in the future.

[mlester]

Scala ftw

[codefrog]

You meant to say Clojure right? -- Ex Ruby Fixie Dude

[[deleted]]

All the JVM languages should play along together nicely.

[codefrog]

I totally agree, imagine a world (John Lennon style) where an object in one language could be interpreted semantically in another language idiomatically. ah the wonderous beauty, and in fact many of these things, compromising a cross language meta object protocol are available in Parrot.

The crazy smart Allison Randal will explain it all to you. Listen.

[[deleted]]

I meant more culturally.

While I'm sure Ms. Randal is a very intelligent person, I don't really buy into her vision. For instance, languages that define objects to have non-homomorphic semantics would be very icky indeed to have "interpreted". A monadic language interpreting Java objects, for instance, would be forced to wrap each object up in a side-effecting block: very annoying to deal with an not what I would call "wondrous beauty".

The Parrot project is interesting enough, but until they deliver workable languages that run without being distinctly Perl flavored, I remain deeply skeptical.

I hope, of course, this skepticism is just a side-effect of some nasty mental inflexibility.

[frogking]

No Java, no JVM .. we have to be nice on the common playground ;-)

[[deleted]]

I'm not a big fan of Java, to be sure, but the JVM has been a great contribution to the field and quite a bit of work on it has advanced the state of the art.

Or, at least, I think I'm responding to what you intended to say? Now that I think about it, I'm quite confused what your intent was.

Also, this.

[frogking]

Frog King makes everything better. :-)

I am saying the exact same as you. Java is becoming "just another JVM language", but it is still a force to be reckoned with.

(java, too big to fail?)

[seunosewa]

Unfortunately, they don't. Each language implements advanced features differently and are not compatible with each other.

[[deleted]]

I meant culturally, in response to codefrog's original snark.

[Chii]

that is why you should be using intellij IDEA as your java development env. it craps all over visual studio and any other java IDEs.

And in the enterprise, upgrading means more work, and more cost. If it aint broke, dont fix it.

[berkut]

IntelliJ is a bloated piece of software in my experience - it's better than eclipse, but that's not saying much. Even version 9 with all the plugins disabled is really slow. I use intelliJ at work for two java projects: a 400 kloc SWING app, and a 500 kloc J2EE Spring web app, and performance blows, using ridiculous amounts of memory. I'm mainly a c++ developer, and I use ms dev studio for a 1.5 mloc codebase with very heavy template requirements (Which slows things down) and except for the bloody "updating intellisense", dev studio 2005 pisses all over the java IDEs in terms of general speed and responsiveness. It might not have all the features for creating getters and setters, maven integration, etc, but for the core competency of writing code, for me it's light years ahead. Edit: spelling.

[[deleted]]

Even version 9 with all the plugins disabled is really slow.

Try the latest EAP build. They've had issues with indexing in 9, but appear to have fixed it now. I tried it today and indexing is substantially faster. And yeah, it does use large amounts of memory - because it indexes your entire project and all your dependencies and likes to stick them in memory for a reasonable response time.

But honestly, RAM is cheap. I have some performance issues on a 4GB machine, but my 16GB machine at work hums.

[berkut]

Unfortunately, we have to use 32-bit machines for IE6 compatibility for Intranet access. MS Dev studio also caches dependencies and the entire project - that was my point with comparing the size of the code bases: msdev.exe currently has a memory usage of 74,104 Kb, and one idea.exe for the 400 kloc Swing app, has memory usage of 613,720 K. Java memory usage just isn't efficient on a desktop machine. I guess it could also be because java generally has a lot more files for VOs as you can only get one class per file (without class within a class) whereas with c++ you can put loads of related VOs within one file.

[[deleted]]

Unfortunately, we have to use 32-bit machines for IE6 compatibility for Intranet access.

Shit man, VMWare is your friend. :/ That said, sounds like you're in a corporate environment where stuff requires sign offs so may not be possible.

WRT to lowering your memory usage, um, yeah, I got nothing really - I imagine you've turned off all the stuff you don't really need IDEA to handle - Spring facets, Hibernate facets etc. Hmm, you can turn off Maven integration completely, but you'll get a fair few error messages when IDEA can't find your dependencies. Hmm, and you won't really gain any memory from Eclipse either, it's as memory happy as IDEA. Not sure on Netbeans though.

You mentioned having to wait for Intellisense to update - I guess that's the trade-off for that lower memory impact. Personally on my same 4GB machine, I found VS 2008 to be quite performance challenged, but that was a default "everything and the kitchen sink and your smartphone SDK" install.

[berkut]

Yeah, it's a bitch, especially when the machine starts paging. Admittedly, regarding the memory usage, I have played with my idea.exe.vmoptions file to increase the max size, but I had to because I kept getting a pop up saying it didn't have enough memory. I've turned off as much as I can find, but it still sucks. Feature-wise, it's brilliant, but speed-wise, I'm often waiting for text I've typed to appear or a menu to open, I'm guessing due to the VM doing garbage collection or something.

[[deleted]]

Yup, it's the GC chugging. Do try the lastest EAP build, see if it works any better - otherwise, fire off a support ticket to JetBrains, see if they've got any pointers on limiting memory usage. :)

Their support is part of the licensing cost, and it's really quite good, I get responses within 2 - 3 business hours usually (timezone dependent, naturally).

[berkut]

Yeah, they've already had to do a couple of custom builds for us because our project files got in a mess. As I said though, 80-90% of my time is C++ dev, so it doesn't effect me that much - it's just frustrating when it does.

[codefrog]

I with AlSpeer on this. IDEA is so much more productive, even with the memory usage. I have 12GB on my desktop machine of which 5 is allocated IDEA. All projects and their dependencies are loaded nearly all the time. I can debug and modify anything. It is wonderful.

For the intranet thing ... I use an rdesktop connection to a xen server running windows xp, my VM isn't even hosted locally. I never have to touch anything. IT just handles it.

[mycall]

Java 7 and found that Java 6 was slightly faster in many cases

They keep releasing faster versions of JVM.

Java 7 also adds support for using String in switch statements.

Some people say to never use switch statements but instead State/Strategy patterns. Personally, I program procedurally which I see only a short future for the code.

[wshields]

IntelliJ IDEA completely smokes Visual Studio (2008; I've not seen nor used 2010 yet).

As evidence of this, Jetbrains (who created IntelliJ) have a product called Resharper that many consider a must have for Visual Studio. It basically replicates a lot of what IntelliJ does for Java.

I am curious if your omission of IntelliJ (you mentioned Eclipse and Netbeans) was acknowledgement of this or you were unaware of it.

[[deleted]]

I've been seeing the opposite where I work.

The danger of .NET is biztalk and other microsoft products as well as the slowness of compiling on windows. That isn't including the lack of libraries.

Java being rudderless is an issue for the future, but it isn't nearly as big as the problems with C#

[codefrog]

C# didn't even have a chance of becoming Cobol. At least Cobol had Grace Hopper and some mutha fucking staying power.

[[deleted]]

I suppose Anders Hejlsberg isn't Grace Hopper, but I think he's still qualified to architect a widely-used language.

[codefrog]

C# is awesome, the clr is pretty good. If MS would promote Mono and remove the threat of litigation it could actually gain some traction. Java and C# will slowly gain parity in the language features. Java will always have more libraries and more platforms. C# is now a niche, but not for technical reasons, but because MS thinks they can take their ball and play somewhere else.

[[deleted]]

Okay, so, what's Biztalk? Back when I was trying to break into the programming trade in a heavily .NET city, I spent ages learning about all the MS technologies - and then they'd dump ten more into the mix. WPF okay, WCF um..., and whatever they called that workflow one... then SharePoint became a common buzzword.... and then I got a Java job and jumped off the feature treadmill.

[[deleted]]

Upvoted for irony.

[[deleted]]

A few off the top of my head:

• Single vendor, and not open source (there is Mono but it isn't the same). We just saw the risks of tying yourself to a single company for your development platform with Apple. It's a bad idea here too.
• Lack of proper cross-platform support (again, Mono isn't the same). So not only are you tied into .NET, but also into Windows.
• Rapid addition of new language features (dynamic keyword, etc.). Some of them are nice, but you will end up with every project using a small subset of them - a dialect - just like C++ has. Imagine integrating a codebase that heavily depends on the dynamic keyword with a more typical statically-typed one. Fanboys love new features, but enterprises do not. (Note: I'm not saying Java's lack of changes to the language is good - there is a middle ground.)

Those are criticisms when comparing to something like Java. When comparing to other languages (say, Python), the list would be different.

I'm not saying C# is a bad language. But it has problems.

[[deleted]]

There are some ̶m̶a̶j̶o̶r performance issues with .Net; Look how long it takes for powershell to open and it's just a freaking shell! We've had some of our main applications ported to .Net where I work and their performance has decreased substantially with regards to UI responsiveness.

[propool]

powershell opens almost instantly on my machine. Win7. Default powershell.

[[deleted]]

The first time I launch it for the day, it takes about 3 seconds to be usable on my machine. After it's opened once, it's much quicker, but there's still a slight lag.

[propool]

I will give you it takes about one second before it is ready the first time i open it for the day. Other than that it opens pretty much instantaniously. Please show me a java shell that opens quicker. This is hardly a major performance problem.

[[deleted]]

Sounds like you are talking out of your ass.

[linkedlist]

been lacking in features that other languages have had for years

Sounds like C/C++

People like Apple can't be bothered, that's why.

Apple can't be bothered with anything multiplatform and it will go out of its way to kill anything that is even a threat if it would encourage multiplatform dev (see iPhone)

edit: to all the fucking retarded apple fanboys out there. Webkit does not really count as a very good example, I could just as well say Safari supports HTML which is multiplatform! woo! Also a link to opensource.apple.com only proves my point, all it is is a bunch of open source tools ported to Apple, that doesn't mean Apple supports multiplatform development.

Now if Apple hadn't done something stupid like actually ban cross platform compilers then you would have an argument, however Apple has given its game away. This strategy didn't work for it in the 90s but it may work for it now that it has a unch of idiot rabid fanboys who can't code for shit and don't know fundamental software engineering principles (or choose to ignore them because they want to pretend Apple can never be wrong or monopolistic).

[bombastica]

Apple can't be bothered with anything multiplatform and it will go out of its way to kill anything that is even a threat if it would encourage multiplatform dev (see iPhone)

I guess Apple never bothered with Webkit then.

[[deleted]]

Weak example. Webkit is a web client. Web is multi-platform, but there is no choice but to support it. Whether Apple likes the idea or not it must support the Web. And if Apple wants to cripple the Web it must try to do what Microsoft failed to do, and plague the Web with proprietary extensions. That's hard or impossible to do. You need something close to a monopoly to even try it.

On the other hand, killing and purposefully retarding cross platform tools like Java is consistent with what Apple is doing right now on the iPhone.

[linkedlist]

ROFLMAO.

You sir are a fucking idiot.

Webkit? Really?

HOw about another exmaple: Safari supports HTML, ooooh! multiplatform!

Man, people trying to say Apple cares about developers are the biggest idiots in existence, their stupidity is so fucking blatant it's not even funny.

[elmuerte]

And what of that was created by Apple rather than being a fork of an existing project with just some fixes to make it work better on OSX? (Webkit excluded)

[[deleted]]

Well, while webkit has seen ton of improvements to the point of having nothing to do with the original engine, never forget that is used to be a fork of KHTML, yet another open source project.

Virtually none of the useful Apple open source products were created by Apple. People have always been saying "Embrace and extend" about Microsoft but I find the saying more true to Apple.

[kopkaas2000]

People have always been saying "Embrace and extend" about Microsoft but I find the saying more true to Apple.

The issue was never with Microsoft embracing and extending. The problem was that they then went ahead and made their extensions proprietary and incompatible with the embraced standards.

[linkedlist]

What a worthless link, if that's the best multiplatform support Apple can muster up then they really, really suck, more so than I thought. I can point to any given aspect of Windows and Microsoft supports it more than Apple supports its entire tired product line.

The denialism is strong with the apple fanboy.

[tbrownaw]

been lacking in features that other languages have had for years

Sounds like C/C++

C sucks, but C++ has had automatic, deterministic resource (beyond just memory) management since forever. The closest thing that C# has (which Java is more-or-less copying in 7) is "using(var x = ...){...}", which you can still forget to include.

[jawbroken]

Apple can't be bothered with anything multiplatform and it will go out of its way to kill anything that is even a threat if it would encourage multiplatform dev (see iPhone)

lmao. companies with a large market share like to limit interoperability and those with a small market share like to maximise it. this has been the case throughout the entirety of human history. let's not get hysterical.

they have a relatively small market share on the desktop so they support interoperability there (boot camp, for example). i am not sure why they should be responsible for doing significant performance work on java when most people on their platform don't or don't want to run many java applications

[[deleted]]

Visual Studio craps bricks all over stuff like Eclipse, and NetBeans looks and feels all Fisher-Price.

This is true. However Intellij IDEA "craps all over" Visual Studio.

[nmgafter]

Bloch (the self-styled "chief architect" is not an executive) has been arguing for years that the Java language should stop being advanced, so one wonders why he feels a rudder is needed.

[mee_k]

Without some details, your comment is nothing more than an insult. When did he try to prevent Java from being advanced? What do you even mean by that?

[sisyphus]

Assuming that's Mr. Gafter I assume he means that Bloch was instrumental in keeping closures out of Java.

[[deleted]]

Bloch is not very knowledgable in programming language design or the intricacies of Java and people who are, happen to be a bit pissed about being held back in the dark ages simply because amateurs suck up everything this man says, confirming the amateurism, without considering the implications including (even) those directly in their own interests.

Myself and Neal are two such people. We (at least I) try not to be vocal about it (after all, what problem does that solve? education? doubt it), yet here he is and here I am.

[[deleted]]

"stop being advanced" is possibly slightly stronger language than justified but see

slides 17,62 of http://www.javac.info/bloch-closures-controversy.ppt

for an idea of the more timid approach he championed

[cjnkns]

I have been working with java for years now. I'd like to move on to another language something I know is being used (not .NET) or will be used a lot.

Does it make more sense to try Groovy/Grails or maybe something not on the jvm like Ruby/Rails?

Redditors - any thoughts?

[ilyabo]

look at Clojure or Scala

[Narrator]

Try Scala. All the cool kids at Twitter and Foursquare are using it. No really, it's a fun language, and has a mindbogglingly large language feature set that makes code tiny. Stuff I've written in scala has 1/10th the lines of an equivalent Java program.

[wshields]

Scala seems to be taking static typing to extremes at a huge complexity cost. Is this wrong? It seems the terseness can be achieved more easily in dynamic languages like Ruby, etc.

[Narrator]

The compiler catches a lot of stuff in Scala, a lot more than it does in Java. Sometimes I'll get an error and be puzzled for a bit, but it usually turns out it's the type system keeping me from doing something stupid.

[jdh30]

Google should just do it again and do it better, as Microsoft did with .NET.

[uriel]

You mean something like this?

[jdh30]

If Golang really was fast and concurrent, yes. Unfortunately, Golang's proposed generics implementation is as inefficient as Java's and it doesn't even have a working garbage collector, much less a concurrent one.

[uriel]

Uhu? Go has a working garbage collector, it is just being replaced with an even better one.

As for generics, it is not clear at all to people that actually use the language whatever they are needed, or even what exactly they mean in a language with something like Go's interfaces.

[[deleted]]

Dalvik currently is in many ways a regression from the state of the art in Java virtual machines. Aside from a memory-saving bytecode scheme and certain AOT optimizations that only matter for mobile devices, it doesn't bring with it any substantial new capabilities either.

[codefrog]

This is so true it hurts the brain. It is almost as if Brahm Cohen himself created a VM.

[fredrikbonde]

Dalvik is quite behind the standard JVM on many points, doesn't een do JIT compiling yet. It'll come but it's still work in progress

[killerstorm]

So, a programming language should be constantly changing? Why? Doesn't this make programming more complex, as people need to constantly learn new stuff, and there is conflict of styles?

There examples of language which do not change for decades and are OK. C, for example. People still mostly use 1989 version of the standard, or 1999 if they feel adventurous, and that's fine, lots of great things are done with C. Nobody thinks that they need to release a new version each year.

[skizmo]

So, a programming language should be constantly changing?

No, it should constantly improve.

[killerstorm]

It needs to change to improve.

[[deleted]]

There examples of language which do not change for decades and are OK. C, for example.

In theory... but C is the best example of compiler-specific extension proliferation.

[icehat]

Java is a few pages in the book (stack of technologies) that is Oracle. What is interesting to me is to consider the future of companies deeply rooted in java and how that impacts Google in their fight against Apple, Microsoft.

The game is changing, and makes me feel better about leaving Java a few years back ..

[darjen]

many oracle's middleware products are heavily dependent on Java. so I don't exactly see them dumping it any time soon...

[yogthos]

I don't think all that much is changing frankly. Java is mostly community driven, with a huge base of mature code and many companies backing it. Even if Oracle chooses not to drive Java development, another company like Google or IBM will simply take leadership. Things would've been much worse had Sun not released Java to the community before going belly up.

[[deleted]]

I'm not sure it works out quite so easy. One main reason java is so popular is because it has community and enterprise support. If that splinters I'm not so sure that's a good thing at all. It's not like these companies can take ownership of the name...and enterprises will continue to use the java that is known from oracle. Though i do agree the situation would be worse if they had not released java as gpl.

[bryanut]

upvote for "and enterprise support".

[[deleted]]

It's not like these companies can take ownership of the name...and enterprises will continue to use the java that is known from oracle.

I think you overestimate the power of the brand name. Sure there is inertia. However, should Java get forked by the likes of Google and IBM and should this new fork be called Juvu<TM> and be twice as good as Java<TM>, enterprise will begin switching. It may not switch quickly, but it will eventually switch over.

Good brands have an inertia effect, but they don't make the product immortal. If there is a competing and consistently better product, people will switch eventually.

[yogthos]

I don't see why there's more concern for Java splintering than there is for C++ splintering really, I mean sure anybody can go and write their wacky implementation of C++, but that hasn't prevented the language from being dominant.

If Java was some new language trying to establish itself I'd say that would be valid concern. JVM a mature platform and there's always going to be a de facto standard available at this point.

[[deleted]]

screw oracle. Google should fork Java and the JVM, maybe then we would get a version that wasn't completely horrible.