Slashdot Mirror
Why is Java Considered Un-Cool?
jg21 writes "After the Slashdot discussion on Paul Graham's 'Great
Hackers' essay, it had to happen. Java developers have taken umbrage at
Graham's assertion that "Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of
only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers
I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero." Now in JDJ Sachin Hejip pinpoints the Top
Reasons Why Java is Considered Un-Cool and to tries to debunk them. He levels some of the blame at the Java compiler for "too much
chaperoning" and speculates that Java fails the geek test precisely because
"it's such a language-for-the-masses." But isn't he missing the point? Enterprise-grade apps and "coolness" may be inapproriate bedfellows. Besides, does any language offer both?"
people just concentrate on the best tool for the job instead of worrying about things like, "coolness".
These, "my programming language is better than the rest and here is a list why" arguments are BS. Every situation is different, every problem requires different tools/methodologies to solve. You wouldn't go into the carpentry business and claim your hammer is the best hammer for every single job would you? You would be laughed at and possibly hit in the head with said hammer. Same goes with programming languages.
Monstar L
Java is the new COBOL. No, I mean that quite seriously. COBOL means "COmmon Business Oriented Language". Java is the language of choice for modern day corporate application development. In the corporate world - which probably accounts for more actual lines of code than anything else - applications fall into two categories, forms (inputting data into databases) and reports (getting data out of databases). The corporate world wants legions of cheap, interchangeable programmers to work on these applications. Kids are taught Java at college or learn it themselves. The language makes it very easy for one person to work on another person's code, and it makes it quite painless to document your work as you go. That's the reason "hackers" don't like Java - they've just transferred their traditional dislike of COBOL to it.
It's got the simplicity of C++.
The freedom from corporate interference of Visual Basic.
The speed of an interpreted language.
And you wouldn't believe how efficiently it uses RAM and CPU power.
I don't see why everyone doesn't use Java!
From my employer's point of view, it makes me more productive than (most) other languages would, since I spend less time worrying about crap like header files, pointers, memory leaks, and so on.
So everyone wins. "Cool" stopped being important when I turned 18.
It's really time to dump your 386 and move on to at least a Pentium.
xer.xes -- 4181
Most developers I know basically slam it for it's reputation for being slow, and frankly, because it's not C, the geek Gold Standard. Perl has the same difficulty and has it's own cultish crowd (Perl users are the Greatful Dead fans of computer science). Python is somewhat trendy as well.
But Java....Java was designed to be easily learned, and to especially be used in web-based apps. To Unix geeks, that makes it kind of the Visual Basic for the Slashdot crowd. Not something to brag on.
Fact is, it's a great language, and it's still growing. A friend of mine is a professional Java developer (mostly server side stuff), and he's one of the brighter bulbs in the lamp. He loves it, and still thinks Java's potential is largely untapped. Whereas we know what C can and can't do, Java is still growing. He thinks it'll be used (and used effectively) for things we can't even imagine yet.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
It's just not that hard to understand this. For good or ill, programming has always been an ego-driven profession. You hear stories of punch cards and marathon hacking sessions, and how cool it was that some guy arranged all of his code so that memory accesses were precisely in alignment with the rotation of the memory drum. You do not hear about how cool the fact that someone's applet can't crash because of automated bounds checking and lack of explicit pointers.
Java is seen as uncool precisely because it protects you from your own mistakes -- it's an attempt to make programming approachable to the masses, and the fact that it's forgiving makes it look like programming with training wheels. And just like the 50 year old MBA will never fit in with the Harley crowd, Java programming will never be seen as cool as "real" hackers' languages like C.
Yeah. Java really sucks and is uncool. No open source programmer would ever use it.
Hell, could you ever imagine an orginization like Apache producing Java code. If that ever happens I'm giving up and moving to Jakarta.
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
That's right, he used LISP.
"And of all the great programmers I can think of who don't work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero"
Why do I get the feeling I wouldn't want to debug this guys code??
Java really isn't -that- slow. That's a common misconception.
Everyone thinks "Java is slow" because the only time they experience Java is in a Swing app. Swing is VERY bloated and therefore very slow. The only other "slow" processes in Java are Garbage Collection, which is pretty minimal if the app is written correctly, and the initial startup of the VM.
Look, for example, at Eclipse IDE. Eclipse is a Java app, and its extremely powerful and not very slow. Why? They use their own widgets that have less overhead, they are not using Swing widgets.
Also, a correctly written OpenGL java app has been proven to perform at 85% the speed of its C counterpart (yes C, not C++). A couple of guys (I can't find the link) ported QuakeII to java to get this statistic. Not bad considering the relative youth of OpenGL bindings in Java.
I once had a "Java Sucks" attitude myself (I've been a hardcore C++ programmer for over 9 years), but I must say, after using the language for quite some time (~2 years), I've become very fond of it, and have written several large & FAST Java apps -- in about 70% of the time it would have taken to write in C++.
in a computing environment where processor speed doubles every 18 months, would you rather have a little bit slow execution for now or a fundamentally flawed security paradigm?
"They who would trade essential CPU cycles to gain a little temporary security deserve neither CPU cycles nor security."
-- B3nj4m1n Fr4nx0rlin
Hmmm, it seemed considerably funnier in my head...
-Stephen
If you're doing device drivers in an interpreted language, you're a fucking moron. Conversely, if you program a web-based app in C, you're a fucking moron. Wow, different tools for different jobs... who'd have though?
'Standards' in computing only impress those who are impressed by things like 'standards'.
Oh, go jump off a (virtual) cliff. Java can handle "soft" realtime just fine, and extensions are being worked on for "hard" realtime support. And yes, some people actually write device drivers in Java. Java isn't slow because it's actually slow, it slow because:
1. C programmers write 10 lines of REALLY LOUSY Java code and decide that proves their point about Java being slow.
2. People like you WANT it to be slow. I'm sorry, comparing Java programming against device driver writing? That's the height of hypocrisy. Just because you're sore that *you* can't write high performance Java code while maintaining the beauty of an OO design, doesn't mean you have to take it out on everyone else.
BTW:
4k games
Amazing OpenGL game
More Java games
JDiskReport
Best BitTorrent client ever
etc, etc, etc.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
I do not find java all that verbose. Terse or not the really key to getting real work done quickly is a large collection of libraries so you do not spend your life reinventing the wheel. Look at Perl it is not a pretty language but cpan makes it so useful that it has yet to be replaced by Python or Ruby.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
Hey, I *like* java, but this kind of crap is definitely shooting yourself in the foot material.
You! Yes, YOU! Out of the gene pool!
Actually, programs are abstractions of electrical systems that, though I have programmed a simple CPU in an FPGA and wired up breadboards, etc. etc., I still don't understand. And Physicists don't even understand Physics! And thanks to Gödel, it's clear we don't understand Math! Argh. Who can save us?!
It's an indictment of Aristotle, Kant, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Method that all of our attempts at formalizing the universe blow up in our faces.
Until we approach every program as the algebraic systematic proof of a string-theoretic electrical circuit model, we will be burdened by the inexorable piles of poo that is the vast majority of the software written today.
Some of his posts are grossly incorrect. Examples:
But the semantics for many programs would not be correct, since Java requires array bounds checking. Disabling it means that you're not compiling Java.
True, if youe xceed the bounds of an array in a Java app you will get an array out of bounds exception - but that is the worst that can happen, a nasty error message. However, this is a totally different can of worms in C/C++. If you don't check the bounds of every single array, you could be exposing buffer overlows in your application, which is a huge security hole. +1 for Java.
You've posted three examples of code that you claimed was as fast or faster in Java than in C++, and every one of them, when compiled properly, turned out to be faster in C++ than in Java.
Faster when run how many iterations under hotspot? 1? 10? 100?
In Java you have to write nine copies of the basic sort function: one for arrays of chars, one for arrays of doubles, one for arrays of Objects, etc.
For one, most people use the Collection or List interfaces for utility classes so that you can pass in any type of object, be it an ArrayList or a linked list, so in the Real World(tm) this is rarely an issue. Additionally, Java 1.5 has templates so it is a moot point.
I could go on and debunk more of his debunking, but I can tell from his posts that ihe is quite biased and is not being resonable. Just for reference, I am *not* a Java developer. I write a lot of C++ code and a lot of java code, both are ideal for certain situations. For example, desktop apps with need for a fast startup time will always be best written in C++ until Java Vms are built into the OS. But for long-running business applications, where startup time is not a huge requirement and ease of development, debugging, and security are a higher priority, Java wins hands down.
I think the author could have done a much better job at debunking those myths. I, for one, am not convinced. Some snippets:
``you cannot really make your friends go ga-ga at amazingly brief programming constructs.''
Right. When you have to write BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)), that indeed doesn't give a strong sense of brevity. Nor does public static void main(String argv[]).
``Java has been considered slow for ages.''
And it's still slow. Each time a new release comes out, people get into the debate of Java is slow vs. you moron did you actually test that? Well, after 1.4 I have given up on testing. It's slower than unoptimized C for all programs I have tested with. Probably this is because I use the wrong kind of tests (ranging from simple loops and calculations to simple chat servers and clients), but just the fact that there are such wrong programs tells something, IMO. And startup time and memory usage continue to amaze me.
``Swing is a brilliant, although hard to learn, API.''
If it's hard to learn, what makes it brilliant? Certainly not its good performance or integration with the host environment. Themability and portability are good, but other toolkits have these, too.
``Java is a strongly typed language therefore you have to tell the compiler exactly what you intend to use.''
That's a fallacy. ML is also strongly typed, yet you don't have to tell the compiler the type you want to use.
``Java is popular. Anything that is popular has lost its elite status and therefore is not cool.''
You mean like Linux, Apache, Perl, PHP, gcc, etc. etc. etc. etc.?
Actually, now that I have read the full article, I don't think the author was trying to debunk any myths at all. More just summing up the points, so that those who want to defend/attack Java know where the battle is.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
In my experience (which isn't huge with Java, but I've used it for commercial work), one of the things I liked most about Java was that it actually tended to save me lines of code.
Oh, sure it's got an explicit full-on syntax, but I'm comfortable with that. What I was most impressed with was there was a vast amount of standard data types and APIs available to accomplish a very huge amount of stuff. Looking at C++ and the like, the APIs are anything but cross-platform. (Any helpful links to a good C++ API (not GUI toolkits) which is both POSIX and Windows might make me use that some more.)
For the type of code I was writing at the time (oddly enough, server side stuff behind a web front-end, no GUI) I found I could always find a standard routine to do what in the past I've had to implement from scratch.
I also specifically loved the good type checking and the like. I want that from my languages.
I'm actually planning on using it for some projects I want to work on for myself.
Would I say it's the perfect language? Nope. Would I claim it has all of the shiniest language features? Nope. Do I, as an old-school C-coder, think it's a straight-forward API rich language that I can get stuff done in? Damned straight!
Since I don't grok functional-programming and I despise languages with really wierd syntax and the like, for me, Java is like the Toyota Camry of languages. For the way I use it, it's fine.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Java is slow - This is a myth.
I honestly don't understand why people are still repeating this. It _is_ slower than either native C++ or
Java bytecode is not easy to optimize, having been originally intended for interpretation (my, how silly that seems now!). This is usually a minor issue compared to memory. I also suspect that, using the standard Java libs, IO is bound to be slower than a more direct approach unless the JVM takes some shortcuts and makes some methods into special cases. But actually, from the point of view of my actual work it doesn't matter what the reason is -- performance critical serious number crunching is done in C++, and that's pretty much a universal, because everyone relevant has made the same simple observations I have. This C++ can then be wrapped with a Java interface for the benefit of other systems that depend on Java and for people who only care about whether the system is Java or not (and so that it works with WebSphere now that the company is locked into WebSphere, heh heh).
So, _whyyyyyyy_ am I _stilllll_ told by posters on
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
I'm amazed that how all of the current "state of the art" Languages/Frameworks still haven't caught up to Smalltalk yet.
Smalltalk is a Language/Library/ and integrated development environment all in one.
It's had for over twenty years:
Java/C#/.Net wish they had all of this "20 year old" tech. They are good Languages/tools that are slowly evolving into Smalltalk. Why don't you just save time and go to the top of the food chain?
It's amazing how one research lab, Xerox Parc, could have been SO far ahead of its time. Its like software has stood still for twenty years.
You can explore it via the open source squeak project. Understand it is written for coders by coders so it takes a little work to come up to speed on it, but in my option, well worth the effort. And Morphic just rocks. http://minnow.cc.gatech.edu/squeak/1
This is true, but that is not the whole picture. One of the things that was obvious right away is that minimizing the number of things the programmer can do wrong causes a significant jump in the effective productivity of the programmer.
Brooks talks about this in the Mythical Man Month as it related to assembly versus high level languages, but we do see the same effect when moving between a language like C and something like Smalltalk or Java. It has been my experience that a good programmer writes more and higher quality code in Java versus C or C++, largely due to three factors:
1. Mandatory exception handling forces error handling down into the code where it can best be dealt with. In other words, you have to work harder to not handle abnormal situations.
2. Garbage collection eliminates whole classes of memory mismanagement problems.
3. Standard libraries contain many useful classes that had to be written independently in C/C++ (leading to a variety of different container classes, for instance, of widely varying usability and quality).
All three of these affect both time to deliver and quality of delivered code. We're not talking about minimal changes in productivity, either. I've been watching and working with Java and C++ since ... well, pretty much since they made it out of the laboratory. The improvement in real world productivity seen with Java is a factor of two to four greater on average versus C/C++ (measured by "how long does it take to get this feature to work", which is not necessarily the same as "how much code did I have to write"). Often lower for GUI work (depending on which GUI toolkit/tools you're using) but much higher for network code. Moreover, bug counts in released code are dramatically lower, like one tenth as many, and they tend to be less serious (a feature may fail, but seldom does the entire application fail).
In any case I guess I would have to vehemently disagree with Graham's contention that great hackers don't use Java. I suspect that is more a matter of which circles you run in, as that certainly doesn't hold true in my experience. There are fewer using it today than three or four years ago, but I surmise that that is mostly a matter of language maturity; the best programmers tend to sit on the bleeding edge, and that's not Java anymore.
Your mileage may vary, contents may have settled during shipping, etc.
jim frost
jimf@frostbytes.com
Real java apps are packaged in a Jar file with a manifest file that takes care of everything...
My dislike of Java has nothing to do with slowness. It has to do with control and succinctness. Trivial example:
// Must be stored in a file called "hello.java"
public class hello {
static public void main(String[] argv) {
System.out.println("Hello world!");
}
}
Since everyone likes readability, I'd like to ask what part of "static public void" helps you to understand the program. Let's compare this to, oh say Perl.
print "Hello World\n";
Which, as Perl's reputation precedes it, is obviously harder to understand.
Javs relies on vast ammounts of knowledge drilled into the heads of students. If the OO paradigm wasn't so popular, Java would be entirely obtuse. Anything not memorized must be looked up. You wanted to add that integer to the float? Too bad. Go look it up type converting. Additionally I'd like to conjecture that the human mind is better at remembering small things than large ones. Therefore, system.out.println() is more difficult to remember than print. I'd rather remember something like "-e" (Perl) to test for file existance, than the Java equivalent, which I have looked up and since forgotten (though I've used each the same number of times).
While C may be verbose, it allows you to have near complete control of the physical operations of the hardware (e.g. when you delete memory or use a pointer, this has a physical analogue).
Java is both verbose (lots of commands to do simple stuff), clunky (really long commands), and forces you to use the OO paradigm whether or not the problem demands it. It's these reasons why I dislike it.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
here is the REAL reason hackers don't like java, and most of them don't even realize it.
the job of an organization developing a software product (whether it's a company, an open source team, whatever), is to get a product out. nobody outside the project cares about languages or anything else, as long as it all works in the end. but to get a product out, the manager eventually has to pick a strategy. they usually fall somewhere in between the two extremes:
A) use a few brilliant (possibly well paid) hackers and let them do the work. they're smart, and good enough to rely on to just do it. managing them is like herding cats, but why would you need to?
B) use an army of keyboard monkeys and manage the hell out of them. these guys can pound out mediocre code, but with enough software engineering from the top down, well defined specs, and massive testing and integration, their work is sieved into a release-quality product.
real hackers hate being marginalized, having their creativity stifled (yes, for those of us who actually write code, not just implement specs, creativity is involved), having to do the dumb solution just because everyone else is too weak to do their part of the smart solution.
java is not a bad language. i think many would agree that is it at least decent (i think it's pretty good, actually). but java is the language of the B coders. it is made to be easy and idiot proof, like visual basic. you cannot do "neat hacks" in java, because if you could, the B coders would screw it up and produce worse code. java is a great language for the B coders. but the choice of java for a project is often a leaning toward strategy B. it's the "we can get any code monkey off the street to do this". it's the grunt work software that real hackers don't want to do, and what B coders are hired for.
perl, a RAD (and rad) programming language, does not suffer this stigma. perl is accepted by hackers, precisely because it is not idiot proof. it's easy to confuse the B coders (and yourself) with some maliciously written ascii barf. you can do some crazy tricks in perl. it does not lend itself well to software engineering and the micromanagement of the B coders. perl is a hacker's language.
many real hackers i've seen instinctively feel resentment towards java and the like, because they see marginalization of the software industry. java is for the blue collar coders, part of the greater plan of "software factories", where reproducability, meeting deadlines and specs, and easy replacement of people is way more important than doing cool shit. those of us who wish to stay at the top of the game, to do the cool shit, to write the programs that interest us the right way are often drawn to the languages that keep out the idiots, that have a higher barrier of entry, and let us do the cool hacks.
i don't dislike java, and i don't dislike you B coders out there (you know who you are). i just don't want to be one of you.
thanks for reading my long-ass post,
p.
OK, so here's my list why Java *is* cool and is used by great programmers:
1. It runs everywhere unmodified. This has got to be the coolest thing of all, and the reason I adopted Java in the first place. At the beginning this was not always true, due in major part to the AWT graphics libraries, but today it is.
2. It's more productive to work with it, leading to fewer bugs. This is very important in business apps. I certainly no longer get C/C++ pointer problems, memory leaks, or perl syntax error problems.
3. It is fast (ok, it loads slow the very first time, but with JDK1.5 this seems to being addressed as well). Somehow Java lends itself so easily for users to write efficient code (i.e.: multithreading is a snap and platform-independent), that somehow the applications we've been replacing with it simply run at least twice as fast as the older C++, VB, and perl apps.
4. It is simple. Sure, some hackers like garbage-looking code because they think the harder to understand their code the cooler it is, but in my book the cleaner and simpler code wins any day, specially when programming in a team environment. I think Java should be given credit as the environment that brough simplicity back to programmers in the internet age (just as VB did in the client-server day).
5. You can use multiple tools to develop the same code base. Heck, and now with ANT (possibly one of the coolest tools in recent times) you can choose your IDE (or command-line if that's your thing) and move the project back-and-forth between IDEs to take advantage of each (GUI design, refactoring, etc). Choice is a good thing.
6. I'll repeat it again: How cool is it to develop in Windows and drop the app unmodified in Linux or OS/X and see it run as expected with NO changes to the code? Or if you prefer, develop in Linux and deploy in Windows. Either way it works.
7. It is standard. Sure, it is not open source but then again not everything has to be. I think the fact that open sourcers advocate freedom should be reason enough to allow other companies to choose if they want to free their software or not. It is their choice. The fact that it is standard means that Java is protected from the "Unix division plage" where now almost no Unix is compatible with any other Unix. Geez, even Linux is starting to become incompatible with all the different versions of itself. Sometimes centralized control is a good thing.
First you say: Yeah, and your point is? In case you didn't notice, passing functions as arguments does not make the worlds most legible / maintainable code. On the other hand, an explicit interface is both legible and maintainable, plus you have an explicit place for documenting the interface (Javadoc in the interface definition).
Then you go on to say:This is an implicit downcast:It compiles perfectly and works as expected.
The last line of this:Is an upcast. and I dare you to find a list implementation in any type-strong language that doesn't require an upcast in this situation. You need it to be able to store objects of an anonymous type on a list.
How such misinformed tripe ends up at +5, I'll never know...
std::disclaimer<std::legalese> sig=new std::disclaimer; sig->dump(); delete sig;
thanks for reading my long-ass post
you're welcome, thanks for posting it
However, I think you miss a few important concepts in your post.
1) Not all "A coders" are hackers.
- I've worked with the elite programmers that do believe that requirements and documentation are good and that a process produces better results. It seems that these are usually the elite and experienced, but not always.
2) Not all hackers are "A coders".
- "B coders" are hackers too. Seen it too many times. Just like anything else, there are more "B coders" and "C coders" that are hackers than there are "A coders". It is just a fact of life, that there is always an elite FEW, but and abudance of mediocrity. i.e., just because you are a hacker, doesn't mean you're good.
3) Managers are people too.
- There are many "B managers" and an elite few "A managers". And usually, an "A manager" is worth a team of "A coders" to a company.
4) Teams are usually a cross section of the population.
- Rarely are there teams full of code monkeys, or full of "A coders". Here is where a great manager is important. An "A manager" will allow enough room for each person to do what they need to, but ensure that each is able to work with the other. I've been lucky enough to have "A managers", and they make a world of difference to individuals and to projects.
5) Programming languages are just tools.
- Use the best tool for the job. Saying you choose a language based on your ability to do "neat hacks" is idiocracy. If I see someone putting nails into a wall with a screw driver, I think - "Damn, that guy is good with a screw driver", and "what a friggen' idiot".
Reading your post it is obvious that you are either an elitist with a lot of bad experiences, or someone with no experience. Either way, I hope your next manager is an "A manager", you really need some help.
I am living proof of the Peter Principle