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Comment by laurent92 | Hacker News Reader

and Java?

The Java community has some great developers, but also a lot of Serious Software Engineers who will sabotage everything with extra complexity, and then everyone who learned Java in school and never felt like looking at another language (not even Kotlin).

Java is definitely "boring technology", but hiring random Java developers will probably sink a company faster than doing the same for Go.

Although still new I'm wondering whether Kotlin could be admitted to the boring technology category given that it was built to dovetail with Java and has first class Spring support?

I’ve found kotlin to be wonderfully boring. There are definitely some sharp knives that get abused though. I’ve met a few people who want to throw OO in the bin and treat kotlin as pure FP to their detriment.

Isn't that a real option with Arrow?

Kind of. I don't think arrow - however good it becomes - can really compete with a language where those primitives (like do notation) come with the compiler.

> everyone who learned Java in school and never felt like looking at another language

A large reason I avoid Java teams.

The GP comment mentions the need for finding engineers with "a proven track record of delivering value", yet here we have a concern about "hiring random Java developers".

Is the industry biased against great engineers who have been working with Java for the past 20 years, even if they "deliver value" (which is pretty much impossible to determine externally)?

No.

But I, personally, am biased against hiring people with only Java on their resume. Because 90% of the time what I've encountered are people who haven't examined their technology choices, questioned the status quo, tried to -improve- things.

That's not a sleight on Java, per se, but it is against anyone with only one language on their resume. It's just that if there is only one language on a resume in web dev land, it's almost always Java.

Yup - it's possible to build uncomplicated software in Java, especially in recent iterations of Java and more... restrained modern frameworks. However, there's no guarantee that you're actually going to either join a team or hire a Java expert with those tastes.

Startups are more commonly on python/ruby/node/php. It's faster to start with and to iterate.

Java and .Net are more common in longer-lived, larger projects, or when performance matters.

and where maintainability and tco matter

I think maintainability is mostly down to developer skill and the ability to abstract to the right level. A good Python dev will likely leave far more maintainable code than an average Java dev.

> A good Python dev will likely leave far more maintainable code than an average Java dev.

And a GOOD Java dev will likely leave far more maintainable code than an AVERAGE Python dev.

I have yet to see this in an enterprise setting, maybe my standard for "average python dev" is too high.

I have yet to see a maintainable Java project of any reasonably large size, anywhere.

Java programs are larger than those in other mainstream languages, just by dint of the verbosity of the language (and research backs this up; studies showing errors per LOC are consistent regardless of the language).

Ergo...

In which case, golang should result in even less maintainable code since it is more verbose than Java.

That being said, modern Java is quite terse (var, streams, default interfaces, and now records and pattern matching, etc.).

There is definitely a certain writing style among Java developers that is overly abstract, but there are plenty of examples of properly written code bases as well.

Also, Java’s “verbosity” is pretty much only a constant factor, and not even necessarily in terms of LOC, but width. What research also show is the benefits of static typing. Also, I am fairly sure there is some survivorship bias working in the background, where an ugly java version of a complex domain survived because the language’s great observability sort of kicking it into a working spaghetti code state, while other projects died a premature death.

Can't one always say that? Wouldn't it be more fair to compare equal level of skill?

I mean, in most cases it doesn't really matter what tech you choose as 1. Most products don't really need "massive scale" 2. It's more important to be proficient in the tech you pick rather than it being the "best tech ever". I mean Facebook still uses PHP no?

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