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

Re:New research find's water wet

[jd2112]

Yes, but the point is silly anyway.

The notion that everything that isn't core functionality is "fluff", gives the impression that it is non-essential.

Let's say I have a weather application that reports meteorological data for a specific zipcode. Let's say that I have a super slick user interface, and I display animated weather graphics in HD.

Fluff?

Not at all. A spartan application which displayed a bunch of plaintext data might have zero downloads. Sexy, eye candy might equate to 20 million downloads.

Which raises the question: What is the actual point of this app? Is it to display weather information?

No. The point of this app is to get downloaded.

So what's "core" again?

No, the point of the app is to display adds to the user.

Re:Java is not written like other languages

[BitZtream]

better package architecture (Nuget)

Just for reference, by saying this, you've made it clear you don't have much experience.

The problem you kids have as developers is that you think using package managers to download and do the dirty work automatically for you is a good thing.

Its not until you cost a business a bunch of money because your package manager did a bunch of stupid crap, or they deleted the version you're using and dependent on that you learn why the rest of us don't. Occasionally a developer will figure it out after they realize they spend 80% of their time updating their project to match changes to the constantly updating packages they depend on rather than using one thats known to work reliably and sticking with it.

I won't even go into the fact that you think code completion makes you a better developer while ignoring that you don't actually know what the methods you use do because you never bothered to look at the documentation for them ... you just happened to notice a name that looked like what you wanted. God, dealing with developers like that has cost me ridiculous amounts of time in my career, and while code completion can be useful to a skilled developer, for the other 99.999999% of developers, its way more of a problem than any benefit that comes out of it.

In short, your post just shows that you're a newb.