java follies [was: PHP vs Perl (Put on flame proof gear)]
charlescurley at charlescurley.com
Sat Mar 18 12:01:18 MST 2006
On Sat, Mar 18, 2006 at 11:28:19AM -0700, Stuart Jansen wrote:
> On Sat, 2006-03-18 at 10:27 -0700, Kenneth Burgener wrote:
> > Stuart Jansen wrote:
> > > On Sat, 2006-03-18 at 01:46 -0700, Ryan Simpkins wrote:
> > > And during the evenings, instead of watching TV, repent and learn Ruby.
> > > Or Python. Or Perl. But not Java, because while it's a much better
> > > designed language than PHP, it's still evil.
> > If Java is a much better designed language, then why is it evil? That
> > statement seems counter intuitive to me.
> The shear verbosity of Java is a pain. Instead of doing things the right
> way, it encourages people to cut corners. ("throws Exception") Many
> people deal with this by using IDEs. So now you have to learn the
> language _and_ a monstrously complicated program that's really only good
> for one thing.
> The community that surrounds a language is also important. For some
> reason Java programmers aren't happy producing simple solutions, they
> have to build frameworks with the potential to solve every problem
> mankind might ever face. An ability to perform an insane number of XML
> push ups every day is seen as a virtue instead of the lack of vision it
> really represents.
Not only that, but they have to re-invent every wheel in the universe,
because the wheels have to run on the JVM. Why?
> J2EE and Struts should have sent off warning alarms a long time ago.
> Only in the last few years has the community realized just how insane
> they are, and how desperately they need to be simplified.
> Java was specifically designed to deal with lowest common denominator
> programmers. As a programmer's experience increases, she should become
> exponentially more productive. Java limits that growth to a more
> logarithmic curve. But on the up side, it makes it harder for the moron
> two cubicles down to completely doom large team projects.
In other words, Java is object oriented Ada. Exactly so.
I'm in the process of learning Java, and the verbosity is
excruciatingly painful. And without #defines, there is no way to use
macros to reduce the verbosity of oft-repeated snippits.
And there does not seem to be any simple way to do anything. Well, not
entirely true: interators are cute. But are iterators there because
the Java designers don't trust you to write a loop correctly?
I was horrified to find that O'Reilly's idea of a Nutshell book on
Java is 1200+ pages, and again to find that it is incomplete.
Charles Curley /"\ ASCII Ribbon Campaign
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