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Love and Hate For Java 8
snydeq writes "Java 8 brings exciting developments, but as with any new technology, you can count on the good, the bad, and the headaches, writes Andrew C. Oliver. 'Java 8 is trying to "innovate," according to the Microsoft meaning of the word. This means stealing a lot of things that have typically been handled by other frameworks and languages, then incorporating them into the language or runtime (aka standardization). Ahead of the next release, the Java community is talking about Project Lambda, streams, functional interfaces, and all sorts of other goodies. So let's dive into what's great — and what we can hate.'"
That was my general thought. Most languages are pretty much interchangeable. What tends to set them apart is the ecosystem they exist in... not just in terms of the 'hard' things like libraries and tools, but the 'soft' things like how much of a developer community (and candidate pool) exists for any particular domain.
Which kinda makes me wonder why language designers bother with these updated versions out side some fetishistic desire to make their language of choice more complicated. Though I guess it does help separate out the 'elite and in the know' from the 'newbies and outsiders'.... though I think C++ really takes the cake in that regard.
More than reacting to C#, they seem to be reacting to other JVM languages that are just more attractive for any shop with experienced people.
The JVM is often used to write large amounts of business crud: Take a parameter, query a database, process a list. Make a service call, transform the result into a slightly different list, merge the results with a different service, then return. You could write that kind of computation in a functional way using Groovy or Scala in half the number of statements. And if there's one rule for programming productivity is that the less statements you need to write, the faster the job can be written, and the less bugs you get.
When the people using your virtual machine start migrating to other languages you do not control, you are at risk of having the people building the language just porting the language away to a different one, and poof, Java becomes obsolete. Therefore, Oracle just has to improve Java.
Try "debugging with print statements" when the codebase takes over 10 minutes to compile, and that's when the resources don't need to be re-processed. After you admit to that, the rest of the post can't possibly be taken seriously.