Comment by sixstringtheory | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sixstringtheory | Hacker News Reader

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sixstringtheory

Java gives you a flexible object oriented language and an incredible set of libraries. It's got an archiver for artifact and dependency management. It now has lambdas and has FRP style stream programming. I'd say it's kept up pretty well with modern fashion, while it's been doing other things far longer than newer, more popular languages. Take Swift, now my daily driver (which I love so much compared to ObjC, which I moved to after Java)... an example of something Java had way before Swift is "Protocol Oriented Programming". Also, Swing's GridBagLayout predates iOS' AutoLayout and CSS (edit: don't know where I was going with CSS haha...). Everything old is new again, and I'm sure Java reinvented a few wheels of it's own.

Also keep in mind that React is a library, not a language. If you want to compare things, compare Javascript to Java, or the Java stdlibs to React. Maybe that's what you meant when you said Java.

IMO, Java and its libraries are nicer to work with solely due to its static nature and OO design. It is worlds apart from a scripting language when you need to refactor, or even just understand, legacy code. And if you can't even run tests on that legacy code anymore, like a React project over a year or two old?

What are the better patterns and productivity boosts you get from React vs. a Java ecosystem?

In addition to all of these good things, you can also use groovy which has a ton of shorthand syntax and makes writing code super easy. Groovy also makes writing tests short and simple. I love java and all jvm languages honestly.

Kotlin though. Everything you said, but a joy to write instead of a chore.

I am betting Kotlin is the new Groovy.

Lets see where it stands 5 years from now, specially if Fuchsia actually gets released.

Kotlin is different because of the focus on tooling, which is the advantage Java still had over all the dynamically typed JVM languages.

Also, Kotlin/Native is in beta now and could target Fuchsia (compiling AOT to native code using LLVM).

What tooling? Being forced to use InteliJ, without any proper support on Eclipse and Netbeans?

Still not able to use several of Android Studio features available to Java, like incremental compilation and slim APKs?

Kotlin advocates seem to forget JVM will never be rewritten in Kotlin, the language is just yet another guest, with the usual syndrome to wrap existing libraries, having to take care about FFI for Java access, not having all features taking advatange of the latest bytecodes, e.g. lambdas implementation.

As for Kotlin/Native, there is nothing to worry about versus what Go, Rust, C++, Dart, D, Nim offer in terms of performance, libraries and in some cases tooling.

Having to buy CLion for a graphical debugger isn't a selling point versus the established alternatives.

Fuchsia is being written in Go, Rust, C++ and Dart, with the team now hiring for node.js support.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2019/03/19/google-working-to-b...

>What tooling? Being forced to use InteliJ, without any proper support on Eclipse and Netbeans?

Seeing that both Eclipse and Netbeans are now more or less dead (and speaking as a long time Eclipse user, from the very first version to around 4), yes, first class vendor-direct InteliJ support is more than enough. And more than most languages (including Groovy) ever had.

>As for Kotlin/Native, there is nothing to worry about versus what Go, Rust, C++, Dart, D, Nim offer in terms of performance, libraries and in some cases tooling.

IMHO, Rust will always be kind of niche as hard to tackle, Dart we'll see, D never went anywhere, and Nim will remain niche, it's a little too idiosyncratic to catch on.

Kotlin is already more popular than all of the above except perhaps Go.

>Fuchsia is being written in Go, Rust, C++ and Dart, with the team now hiring for node.js support.

Fuchsia is still vaporware or at least irrelevant. It's not even in the market yet. And the fact that it's written in 4 (and looking for 5th) languages doesn't really bring much confidence.

Groovy had Netbeans and Eclipse support, which was dropped when it started fading away.

We move in different worlds, no InteliJ installations around here.

I remember when Groovy was popular, with every JUG in Germany having weekly talks and Sun talking how the next JEE revision would support Groovy for writing beans.

Popularity doesn't write software.

I don't understand how Groovy is fading away when it is getting more and more popular. Groovy is also very similar to Java. There is no learning curve, you are immediately creating value.

More popular where?

Had it not been for Google's adoption of Gradle for Android and it would have been left for Grails maintenance projects.

And even then, the pressure for perfomance has been so much that it is being superceded by a Kotlin based DSL.

How to improve Gradle has been a common talk at every Android conference since Android Studio has been introduced.

Everywhere?

Google Trends says Groovy is just as popular as it was 10 years ago. The number of downloads has increased significantly but it is not because of Gradle, as Gradle bundles Groovy. It is also currently placed #16. on TIOBE Index

And last, Groovy with compile static is in most cases, just as fast and memory efficient as Java.

Some people always talk down Groovy, yet the numbers speak for them self. Before Kotlin, Groovy was attacked by Scala developers.

The major thing Groovy has over both Scala and Kotlin is strong similarity to Java syntax which makes the learning curve non-existing. And that is a bigger deal than a random cryptic/confusing programming expression. Code readability is very important.

Certainly not in Germany where it vanished from JUGs.

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?q=%2Fm%2F07sbkfb,%2...

Java worldwide average 86%

Groovy worldwide average 2%

Pretty popular indeed.

> Some people always talk down Groovy, yet the numbers speak for them self

Many of those numbers are fake. Groovy was #70 on the Tiobe index only 12 months ago, see [1], but is #16 now. How do you explain that? Groovy was last in Tiobe's top 20 about 2 years ago when the search numbers for "Groovy" from Baidu were hugely incorrect. Groovy later quickly dropped back out of the top 50.

[1] https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/groovy/

"Cédric Champeau: Goodbye, Groovy!"

https://melix.github.io/blog/2019/03/goodbye-groovy.html

>Groovy had Netbeans and Eclipse support, which was dropped when it started fading away.

I know, I've used it. What I said is that it did not have the first class IDE attention of a major vendor, those were mostly third party sub-par plugins compared to the Java focus of those IDEs. For Kotlin, however, it was first class IDE support as a primary concern from the start.

>We move in different worlds, no InteliJ installations around here.

Then we indeed move in different worlds.

>Popularity doesn't write software.

No, its just the only thing that matters when it comes to get paid for it.

Delivering working software as per customer's RFP is what matters, everything else is fluff.

Fuchsia is language agnostic. This is a boon. Writing for Fuchsia isn’t like writing for Unix where C is king. Fuchsia is able to natively host many more ecosystems than Linux cares to bother with. It gives me great confidence.

Windows has been language agnostic for decades.

What's so remarkable about that fact?

Tons of great stuff for Unix is written in C++ and other languages all the way to Python and Java. You can write Unix apps in whatever language you want. Ditto for Windows and MacOS.

Not sure what the special deal is with Fuchsia here.

Perhaps you think you'll be able to write Fucshia device drivers with any language you like? That wont be the case at all.

Also Linux has this going in its favor over Fucshia: it actually exists.

"InteliJ support is more than enough"

That won't get kotlin more traction. No proper/official tools for LSP support means no vscode, vim, emacs etc. users. As a happy eclipse user, I wouldn't call it dead either.

Groovy was a random JVM-based dynamic language with no major company support and no special tooling.

Kotlin has IntelliJ (and thus a great IDE) and Google standing behind it, and Steve Yegge's nod of approval.

Not every Java shop is going to drop Eclipse and Netbeans just to make JetBrains happy.

As for Android, lets see what happens with Fuchsia.

The overwhelming majority of Java developers don't even know who Steve Yegge is.

>Not every Java shop is going to drop Eclipse and Netbeans just to make JetBrains happy.

True. They will drop them because Eclipse has been faltering for ages and has been dropped by IBM, and Netbeans has always been a subpar unloved stepchild used by the kind of devs that don't know better and think SlickEdit or Notepad++ are great editors.

>The overwhelming majority of Java developers don't even know who Steve Yegge is.

That's on them.

I guess Fortune 500's have missed that memo, including IBM own subsidiaries.

Lets talk back in 5 years from now.

I am betting Kotlin would become yet another language that happens to compile to the JVM, after the Android honeymoon goes away.

>I guess Fortune 500's have missed that memo, including IBM own subsidiaries.

They probably did. They're late for all memos. The Fortune 500 is not were you'll go to gauge adoption. Heck, half of them still have IE6 only apps.

There are hundreds of thousands of companies, and just 500, well, Fortune 500.

Apparently you use the most established and boring development-wise of companies (Fortune 500) to prove Kotlin is not used widely, but you're OK with vaporware like Fucscia that's not even beta yet as an argument that Dart and co are.

>I am betting Kotlin would become yet another language that happens to compile to the JVM

And I bet you're wrong. Let's see in 5 years. We were on HN 10 years ago, we'll probably be here then. I'll set a reminder.

Because they prove Google is struggling with internal politics where to go next.

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