My inner mathematician respects Java. The first step in any problem is defining your universe
I still think Java is good for teaching newbies precisely because it will throw an error quickly if they are doing it wrong.
Hello World
30 minutes of boilerplate
writing imports
$ cat <<EOF > Hello.java public class Hello { public static void main(String args[]) { System.out.println("Hello world!"); } } EOF $ java Hello.java Hello world!ok
I got the impression they skipped the hello world cause it was too easy and they wanted to get right to writing their app, so they moved on to more advanced stuff without having a real grasp of the basics
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
Oh my god I got fucked by a python script once because of a single space. It took forever to figure out what went wrong
Python has its drawbacks but it also has a pretty useful standard library so as a language for small scripts, one can do much worse
It is possible to dislike both. For me SmallTalk-like languages are peak. Message passing for life!
He types REALLY slow.
I really enjoyed the text.
From the perspective of a python programmer it all seems valid.
A Java-Dev would probably write the same about an embedded engineer.
Sorry, you had a small error in the spacings of your post; Therefore I cannot parse a thing you’re saying. Didn’t mean to scare you with a semicolon either. It’s just a tool in language’s to end a clause and begin a related, independent clause. That could be useful somewhere…
Must be several years old - otherwise, javafx deserves quite a bit more ire.
I’ll never get the hate for java and love for python. It’s like learning mandarin because you think it’s easier than Spanish. When you know java you also kinda know javascript, C, Php, and others. When you know python, it’s probably a government sponsored course, or a programming class talked your school district into buying their “intro to programming python course”. Plus you only get to know python. I’ll die on this hill
Aside from the general stupidity, Java is a heavily front-loaded language in my experience. I’m not going to engage in any tribalism about it or claim that it’s better or worse than others. As a matter of personal taste, I have come to like it, but I had to learn a lot until I reached a level of proficiency where I started considering it usable.
Likewise, there is a level of preparation on the target machines: “Platform-independent” just means you don’t have to compile the program itself for different platforms and architectures like you would with C and its kin, as long as the target machines have an appropriate runtime installed.
Libraries and library management is a whole thing in every general-purpose language I’ve dealt with so far. DSLs get away with including everything domain-specific, but non-specific languages can’t possibly cover everything. Again, Java has a steep learning curve for things like Maven - I find it to be powerful for the things I’ve used it in, but it’s a lot to wrap your head around.
It definitely isn’t beginner-friendly and I still think my university was wrong to start right into it with the first programming classes. Part of it was the teacher (Technically excellent, didactically atrocious), but it also wasn’t a great entry point into programming in general.
I’m not a Java dev, but I know enough of it to fix simple bugs in the backends I work with. My main issue with it is that 99% of the code doesn’t seem to do anything. The clear, obvious place that looks like it handles the feature you’re looking for? None of it does anything! It just instantiates another class from God knows where to actually do the work. I swear I spend most of my time in Java projects just looking for the damn implementation in a sea of AbstractSingletonFactoryBean shit.
I’m sorry just as a matter of policy I’m going to have to downvote you for saying you like java. Nothing personal.
I think some things that were novel when java came out are such old hat at this point the 1990s benefits just aren’t benefits anymore. Run anywhere? I’m in a html app right now. As is my IDE and my chat app. Strong interfaces and sane types are only in comparison to the bizarroland of c++ which visibly always seems to basically be word vomit. JIT compilation is in python which is both easier to use and has way better tooling and libraries…making python today run in the “fast enough” category that java was kinda in. I’ve literally never seen a usable java UI tho.
So you’re going to stride past the part where I say “I’m not going to […] claim that it’s better or worse than others”, ignore the bulk of my comment on Java being hard to get into, make a point of declaring you’ll downvote for stating a personal opinion, then pretend it’s “nothing personal”? I’d be curious how that makes sense in your mind.
Anyway, like I said, I see no point in petty tribalism. I like Python and C too - that’s not mutually exclusive. I hope you have a pleasant, Java-less day :)
Minecraft is a decent example of a good java program. People jump to the first silly reason to disregard it. Cope.
Python and Java are barely comparable. I adore both languages equally and use them about the same amount at work. They are just different tools better suited to different tasks.
My experience with Java over the last 2 decades or so. Shame Android gave it extra life, thankfully Kotlin exists now.
I’m sure that’s Fireship, without clicking the link.
Nah it’s not you should check it out
I might have agreed a decade or two ago, when I knew no better. But today, I find the tribalism surrounding programming languages comical.
I don’t particularly like Java, but I use it because it pays the bills. Similarly, I use C++ (which I prefer) when my work requires it.
Tell us more ancient one, your heroic tale of “giving up against the endless weight of capitalism” is fascinating.
Love the dramatics.
This ancient one has learned the art of pragmatism. A little time in the trenches of enterprise development can do that – turn passionate ideals into practical choices.
Some days it’s C++, some days it’s Java, Python and so on. In the end, the code compiles, and the ancient one get paid.
“giving up against the endless weight of capitalism”
We just call it “having a job” nowadays
I don’t particularly like Java, but I use it because it pays the bills. Similarly, I use C++ (which I prefer) when my work requires it.
I mean, anon is not arguing against that. They’re saying the language is shit regardless of how much it is used in business. I don’t think they are entirely wrong.
If it took anon 30 minutes to write hello world in java, programming is not for anon.
We bow to your wisdom, wise gatekeeper
Thank you. If you bothered to read a 5 minutes tutorial instead of posting to 4chan, you could also reach this level of knowledge.
Don’t be mad, you’re the one that commented lol. It’s like you’re choosing to be upset
I thanked you for your reply and suggested reading a tutorial. How does that make me mad and upset? You’re acting weird.
It’s like 5 lines of trivial code
Some of us try to understand what we’re doing, rather than just copy/paste. It’s easy to discount how difficult learning the basics of something is when you’re already past it.
C# masterrace and I’m tired of pretending it’s not
After close to two decades of programming, C# is still the best language I’ve used. While some of the newer features seem a bit weird, I’d say it’s one of the few languages that has never got in the way and has just let me write code that made sense. Even with all the improvements Java has made over the years it’s still nowhere near as good as what C# was like maybe 15 years ago.
The same goes for everyone’s other “fav” language, Python. Ruby has been a better beginner scripting language than Python for many years, and while Rails is definitely a ghetto, as a language Ruby is great at teaching great programming fundamentals.
C# is pretty good generally - I know it far better than any other and it pays my bills! - but it certainly has its weak points. Particularly around the newer features, a lot of them feel really rushed and just kind of shitty.
The one I hate the most is the whole “nullable” pattern. It’s a total mess. Having to mark up files as
nullable enable, having to mark methods with a bunch of attributes, and the way that it works differently if it’s a value type or a reference type, it’s just so half-baked.If you spend some time with a more modern language like Rust or Swift then you’ll quickly start to notice C#’s weaknesses.
I feel like you’re doing something wrong with the nullables… I’m pretty sure you don’t need to mark up files, you can just enable it on the whole project? I’m not sure about the attributes, you might have a point there, but it just makes sense for value vs reference types IMO, since value types are already implicitly different in terms of nullability.
But yeah, I can imagine it’s half-baked, since nullable reference types (that’s the name, previously reference types were just nullable by default with no extra features) are a more recent addition to the language, one that wasn’t built with them in mind.
Not using Eclipse helps. Using Scala helps even more
Really want to go to La Scala one day but I looked it up and the tickets are like 500 euros. An eclipse is much cheaper
My old boss is one of the 3 initial creators of Java. He ran our department the same way this greentext reads.
He was also a paedo. You can figure out the rest if you dig.
It’s written pedo. I don’t know where the “paedo” thing came from.
Confidently incorrect.
From PIE root “pau-” (few, little), to Latin-transliterated via Greek “paed” (boy, child), and spelled thusly to distinguish from “ped-” (foot), circa 1600AD. Reduced to “pedo” from “paedo” as part of the shift in Americanization of accents and spelling in the late 1700s early 1800s.
Known for : the Java programming language, internet sex crime and the fantasy defense.
Are you saying OP is…
No.
I also think Java is shit, but if you manage to get a NullPointerException while writing a hello world program, maybe anon is just not cut out for computers?
I always loved that Java has a NullPointerException but doesn’t have the concept of pointers in the language (only references).
C# has
NullReferenceExceptionand it actually makes sense.That is because they planed to add pointers and then gave up.
I mean… they have them. And
unsafe. You’re just not supposed to use themI can’t tell if you are making a joke but I can believe it could happen if it’s Java
object orientated programming is the wrong idiom for almost all problems, and even in the few cases where it makes sense, you have to be very careful or it’ll hurt you
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.
The Linux kernel actually uses quite a bit of OOP ideas. You have modules that are supposed to have a clear interface with the rest of the world, and they (ab)use structs to basically work like objects. If you try hard enough, you can even do “inheritance” with them, like with their struct kobject. It is actually somewhat well-thought-out, imo. No need to go full OOP, just pick some of the good parts, and avoid the MappingModelFactoryServiceImpl hell or the madness that is C++.
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.
Objects are great for game programming.
Stuff like enemies, bullets, loot, items, etc. are constantly changing and affecting each other. This makes it difficult to program in fixed functions that run through and crosscheck a bunch of constantly changing arrays. It makes logical sense to have objects with their own functions stored in dynamic lists instead of arrays. A lot of the properties are used by several different objecs, like coordinates or health points, so it also makes sense to describe them in classes.
So, I’d say that it’s a useful way to classify data that is very dynamic, or when different functions need to run depending on that data.
I don’t like putting all code into classes, because a lot of code doesn’t need that kind of flexibility.
What are some common situations where using an object is a good solution?
It depends on what you mean by “object”
- Some kind of structured data?
- Some named type which fulfills an interface?
When you have some kind of structured data, having a class to represent it is fine. If you’re able to give it type annotations, that’s much better than passing around random dictionaries.
When you need polymorphism and have an interface where some method on an object needs to exist (e.g.
car.honk()), that’s also fine as long as you avoid creating subclasses and using inheritance. If you need some car that can honk like a truck and drive like a racecar, use composition.What I would consider a good use of classes (more specifically, nominal types) is dependent types. The idea is that you use the type system to enforce invariants for data.
For example, suppose you have a string for a user email. It might be a valid email string, or it might be garbage like “z#%@(”=))??". You have a function for updating the user email in a database, and it requires the email string to be valid.
One approach is to validate the email string after receiving it from the user. That works, but what if your coworker creates a new form and forgets to validate the email string there? Bad data gets passed downstream to functions that expect well-formed data.
Another approach is to validate the email string at the top of every function that expects well-formed data. That also works, but now you’re validating the same string multiple times and pasting
validate_email(email)everywhere.With a dependent type, you have a
ValidatedEmailtype and a constructor for it. The constructor will return an instance of theValidatedEmailif and only if the email string is valid. Any function that expects a valid email will only accept aValidatedEmail, and not a string. If your coworker creates a new form and forgets to validate the email, the type system will complain about a string being passed instead of aValidatedEmail. You also shift the responsibility of validating the email to wherever there is a boundary between validated and unvalidated data, avoiding unnecessary validation since you know aValidatedEmailis already valid.It’s an extremely useful paradigm for avoiding logic errors, but it’s unfortunately not as common as it should be.
Very cool! Thanks for this
