Re: The Revenge of the Geeks

From:

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk>

Newsgroups:

comp.os.linux.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.databases.oracle.server,comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 20:13:03 -0500

Message-ID:

<51008aa5$0$294$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>

On 1/23/2013 4:25 AM, Arved Sandstrom wrote:

On 01/23/2013 02:21 AM, BGB wrote:

On 1/22/2013 11:33 PM, Kevin McMurtrie wrote:

In article
Yes, it is a shame that Oracle runs Java but Sun wasn't so great at it
either. Both pushed for high cost, high complexity "enterprise edition"
libraries that come and go like fashion but dragged their feet on
streamlining the language itself.

much agreed...

the lack of "streamlining" of the core language is admittedly one of my
bigger complaints about Java at present.

this is along with what few new features are added to the core language
(and to the JVM) are IMO far too often via ugly hacks.

I'm not too worried about Java the language being close to stagnant, so
long as library development is up to par. Because if the solution I've
selected includes the JVM, then often Scala or Clojure are better
choices for high-productivity coding. Myself I don't care if Java the
language ever gets updated again - it's not important. The innovation
shifted away from Java the language years ago; there are better JVM
options now.

I am a bit skeptical about that as a general approach.

If the situation were that Java programs were almost always correct
but that what took time was writing all the boilerplate code, then
switching to Scala would be an obvious choice.

But I don't see that. I see a large portion of Java developers not
mastering Java and switching them to Scala would be one big
fucking disaster.

So I would disagree with both you and Kevin that "streamlining" the core
language is all that important. You can't do enough of it to core Java
to make it worthwhile, without major changes. So why bother now? What's
important actually *are* those "high cost, high complexity EE
libraries", plus the later SE/EE-agnostic libraries like concurrency.

90% of developer productivity is achieved by adept and informed use of
what other people have written: libraries.

I completely agree.

Arne