Your Java Code Is Mostly Fluff, New Research Finds

itwbennett writes In a new paper (PDF), researchers from the University of California, Davis, Southeast University in China, and University College London theorized that, just as with natural languages, some — and probably, most — written code isn't necessary to convey the point of what it does. The code and data used in the study are available for download from Bitbucket. But here's the bottom line: Only about 5% of written Java code captures the core functionality.

Comments

Is this a Java problem?

[rubypossum]

It seems like the Java ecosystem is fine tuned for producing a high signal to noise ratio as far as intent of code is concerned. So much of the ecosystem stresses templates, massive IDEs and other automated tools that make the production of thousands of lines of unnecessary boilerplate incredibly easy. Besides, isn't this the nature of Java anyway? It seems like it's designed to produce the most verbose code possible in the hope that if everything is explicit more bugs can be diagnosed since the compiler has more to work with. It's almost a troll article, seriously, it's like the guy is just tryiing to piss people off.