Anon tries programming in Java

I always loved that Java has a NullPointerException but doesn't have the concept of pointers in the language (only references).

I've worked on a corporate project with multiple Java services, anon isn't really exaggerating. Java can be a hell scape at times

I'm pretty sure Java doesn't have pointers, so writing a hello world application isn't gonna fuck up nearly that hard.

The one thing he forgot though is that your source file is probably in the folder

com/companyname/net/classes/factory/factoryfactory/worker/lib/bin/refresh/jdk/model/ui/closebutton/press.java

And spread out among a bunch of other directories, and the java file is like...3 lines. But there are 10k files spread all around directories like this that are all 3 lines a piece with a class definition.

I've been programming in Java professionally for 11 years. It's not just embellishment, it's outright lying.

Threads giving you race conditions? All concurrent programming will do that if you're shit at it.

Java has come a long way. I will admit that UI in Java is terrible. I would never do that.

95% exaggeration. Here is reality:

• yeah you need main class coz it’s OO-language. Though, not required anymore, which should’ve been done once Java got scrip language capabilities (jshell) back in JDK 9. But as of today not required anymore
• imports exist in most if not all languages. Gotta be insane writing them manually in 2010 let alone 2024
• installing Java runtime (JRE) is as simple as installing any app. Though for installing JDK you need 5 mins for setting PATH. Think about JDK as like TSC or Webpack and JRE as a Browser. I’d argue installing and configuring JDK is simpler than TSC or Webpack
• Unless you doing some non-trivial multi-threading your stack trace will tell you exactly where is your NPE. You gotta be as blind as my teammates to spend more than 1 minutes to find where it is coz it literally tells you file and line numer where Exception occurred
• I mean, yeah if you use IDE from 2000 it will look like it. IntelliJ looks modern, though I don’t like the fact latest versions look like VSCode
• I hardly reach 3G of deps from all 10 projects I have on my workstation.
• IDK what anon means by ecosystem here, Java ecosystem is quite standard across the board. JDK(std lib), Maven/Gradle(deps, build, publishing), Spring Framework (all sorts of blueprints and solutions to standard app level problems), Hibernate/JPA (ORM), JUnit+Mockito (testing). These are tools and libs used in 90% of projects I worked on. Of course there will be more depending on project needs. Layers? It’s not like language imposes any layers whatsoever. It’s just common practice to have 3-4 layers and some glue in-between.
• don’t do GUI in Java it sucks and will suck until Java gets string interpolation. Hopefully soon
• concurrency is actually the only thing which is really bloated in Java. Which will change with next LTS version if I remember correctly. And it’s not that hard if you actually read the f manual and not just “try and hope”. Again it will become much more efficient and easier to follow soon. As of now - yeah, not trivial. But people mostly prematurely optimize, so karma
• Java is kinda have 20 ways to do same thing but actually no. Java built with idea of providing simple building blocks. Then it provides more specific API built on top of those building blocks. It allows to have API which solves typical problems and provides capability to solve custom problems with those building blocks. People often confuse this as many ways to do one thing but it’s like saying “I can have byte array why I need string data type”. Those are different levels of abstraction

Edit: typos

• a hello world doesn't need libraries in Java
• installing JDK takes at most 5 steps, depending on the OS
• a nullpointerexception is more likely the developper's fault (unassigned value, calling a function on a null object)
• IntelliJ is easy to install and modern (granted, other IDEs are very ancient)
• developping GUI apps is a PITA, no matter the ecosystem (generally)

The rest is more or less spot on (no idea about concurrency issues though)

Java is religiously backwards compatible. Modern java projects are not as enterprisey and boilerplatey, but, as jdk21 is backwards compatible with jdk1.3, you can still happily write code as if it's 2003.

Additionally, the java space is huge, so just wildly googling will probably not help you that much.

I have developed in java and C/C++ (many years) and Anon is maybe exaggerating a bit but not lying, we all have been there more or less.

Personally I hate how java forces you into bad architectural choices. Where is the unsigned int? Why isn't an int a class BTW? Why the pass by copy for some, by reference for others? Where is multi inheritance? Lots of things are dumbed down or you have no choice in the matter.

Sure didn't help it was a power hungry beast moving at snail speed back in the day too.

Only have a beginner perspective, but in school I did really well in intro CS class that used Python. 2nd class was in Java and it almost broke me I was so confused.

It's much better today, but in 2010 that was 100% accurate.

That being said, using Java as a first time programming language is like a 15 year old trying to fly an airliner to get a few blocks away to pick up some after school snacks. Obviously it's way overkill. Sure you could get across town with it, but it's probably 1000x more complicated than just a simple bicycle or even walking.

Java is industrial strength for professionals. There's absolutely no consideration made for educational usage.

For the “simple” apps anon is talking about, they are exaggerating a lot. Though, when you get beyond the obligatory “Hello World” and “a window with a button”, the complexity does start to increase exponentially.

Throwing in frameworks like Spring or JavaFX does make things more complicated. But it’s still relatively manageable once you get used to it and know what goes where and when.

Now the whole configuration thing, that’s an art form best left to those hooded “seniors”. It’s good to learn eventually, but not when you first start out; lest you have a fetish for pain.

Java has come a long way. It’s not the languages fault that people create monstrosities like AbstractJavaFinalSerializedFactory or whatever. But if you do want to be “good” at Java, you will want to learn about design patterns. It also doesn’t hurt to have a thick skin too, because you’ll be both criticized and made fun of for your choices. 😊

C# is nearly the same, but much, much better.

• It doesn't (usually) come with the Java culture 8 layers of abstraction. This isn't in the Java language. This isn't in OO. Yet nearly every Java programmer makes things way more complicated than it needs to be.
• It's a prettier language. Similar syntax with less bullshit.
• It's open source
• It's still multiplatform. Modern dotnet / C# works on anything.
• Both Visual Studio and Visual Studio code are great IDEs that blow Eclipse out of the water
• It's one of the most common business languages.
• It's going to be supported forever.

If I could restrict the world of programming to two languages, it'd be C# and Rust. C# for most things and Rust for a lower level language.

No. Every language has its haters. There's a reason Java is so widely used. If you like it, keep at it.

I thought I like Java until I tried Kotlin. It's everything I liked about Java, but with everything wrong with it fixed.

I am a certified Java hater, but you're allowed to like it. If simple and objected oriented is what you want, I can see the attraction, and it has a good and mature ecosystem.

No, Java has lots of merits. For example, once you know layout managers, you can have a resizable GUI app in no time. It's the exact opposite of arranging things pixel by pixel. You just define "I want a grid of these buttons south and a big text field in the center" and Java will do the rest. I whip up apps like this for the silliest things, like noting which dungeon has what rotating boss this week in a game, so it's more convinient than noting it in a text file.

Honestly I would consider that a bit weird. At the very least, old-fashioned. If you like Java, it makes me think you haven't tried a better more modern language to compare it with.

Are you saying OP is...

Tell us more ancient one, your heroic tale of "giving up against the endless weight of capitalism" is fascinating.

We bow to your wisdom, wise gatekeeper

They only had to deal with LWJGL. The corporate java world has to use Spring.

Idk. Maybe it's because I learned OOP first that it makes more sense to me; but OOP is a good way to break down complex problems and encapsulate them into easily understable modules. Languages like Java almost force everyone on the project to use similar paradigms and styles, so it's easier for everyone to understand the code base. Whenever I've worked on large non-OOP projects, it was a hard-to-maintain mess. I've never worked on projects such as the Linux kernel, and I'm hoping it's not an unmaintainable mess, so I'm pretty sure it's possible to not use OOP on large projects and still be maintainable. I am curious if they still use OOP concepts, even though they are not using strictly OOP.

I also like procedural python for quick small scripts. And although Rust isn't strictly OOP, it obviously borrows heavily from it. Haskell is neat, but I haven't used it enough to be proficient or develop good sense of application architecture.

I've done production work in C, but still used largely OOP concepts; and the code looks much different than code I've seen that was written before C++ was popular.

I have been trying to be more functional but I still use classes for things like loading/modeling configs. What are some common situations where using an object is a good solution?

I use python if that helps at all.

Python:

        print("Hello world!")
  

Welcome to java, we have a couple unconventional ways of doing things, but overall I'm like every other mainstream oo language.

People: AHH! Scary!

Welcome to python. your knowledge of me wont help you elsewhere as my syntax is purposefully obtuse and unique. Forget about semicolons, one missed space and your code is as worthless as you after learning this language.

People: Hello based department

This is getting a little better nowadays.

    
> cat Hello.java
void main() {
    System.out.println("Hello, World!");
}
> java --enable-preview Hello.java
Hello, World!

  

Things to notice:

1. No compilation step.
2. No class declaration.
3. Main method is not public static
4. No String[] args.

This still uses preview features though. However, like you demonstrated already, compilation is no longer a required step for simplistic programs like this.

Java is amazing and I love it, and I agree that this is not really a good list of problems. (Not that I expect green texts to be well thought out, rational, real, fair, or anything other than hyperbolic rants lol.) There are good reasons to critique it and the ways people use it, but this isn't it.

Particularly funny is the one about race conditions. That's something you'd have to deal with in any sort of multi threaded environment.

I'm sure that's Fireship, without clicking the link.

My experience with Java over the last 2 decades or so. Shame Android gave it extra life, thankfully Kotlin exists now.

Honestly, I prefer C to Java, it's incredibly simple without all the BS that Java throws at you:

• interfaces - compiler will fail if you provide the wrong types; w/ Java, figuring out what types to pass is an effort unto itself
• functions - everything needs to be in a class; even callback functions are wrapped in a class (behind the scenes if you use modern Java); in C, you just pass a function
• performance - Java uses a stop the world GC, which can cause issues if you have enough data churn; in C, you decide when/if you want to allocate or free memory, no surprises

There are certainly some bad parts, but all in all, when I run into an issue in C, I know it's my fault, whereas in Java, there are a million reasons why my assumptions could be considered valid, and I have to dig around the docs to find that one sentence that tells me where I went wrong w/ the stuff I chose.

That said, I prefer Rust to both because:

• get fancy stack traces like I do in Java (I really miss stack traces in C)
• compiler catches most of my stupid mistakes, Java will just throw exceptions
• still no stupid interface hell, I just satisfy a specific trait and we're good
• generally pretty concise for what it is; I can rarely point to a piece of syntax and say it's unnecessary

I use:

• Python - scripting and small projects
• Rust - serious projects or things that need to be fast
• Go - relatively simple IO-heavy projects that need to be pretty fast
• C - embedded stuff where I don't want to mess w/ the Rust toolchain

Java has been absent from my toolbox for well over a decade, and I actively avoid it to this day because it causes me to break out in hives.