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Comment by strangemonad | Hacker News Reader

And when you leave aside Java (the language) and consider the jvm platform broader ecosystem with all the various interoperable languages like kotlin, scala, clojure… it’s a huge space.

I understand some level of heathy criticism but, I don’t really understand the level of hate the jvm gets.

When you look at recent and upcoming features, a lot of the complaints about it being “heavy” are being directly addressed.

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On the Internet nobody knows you are a dog.

There is a wide spectrum of age, experience, and attitude in the programming population. Hot take: I am guessing that a lot of the noisy hating and hemming and hawing comes from the newer, less experienced cohort, we just can't tell on the Internet and so the perception skews that a significant fraction of all programmers think this way. I am basing this on having been there, done that, where I would scoff with indignation at any software not written in hand-optimized assembler with a bunch of unnecessary (to my newbie self) layers of abstraction.

Reason Java gets so much hate: It's never cool to be an advocate for the old, warted, battle-tested, reliable, supported option.

And everybody wants to be cool.

It's the Toyota A series or Volvo B18 of programming languages.

Interesting that you mention Toyota.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/toyota...

JVM is not really that heavy since the Intel released "Core i" series processors. Also, JVM uses its resources well. It's one of the best engineered software artifacts if you ask me.

I really enjoyed using the language back then, and will not hesitate to restart if there's a scenario which would fit the bill to use it.

I really dislike Java but I like the JVM and am a big fan of clojure. I don’t trust/like Oracle, and maybe it’s just confirmation bias, but I hear much more along these lines than people who just dislike the jvm.

It's not heavy, it's the syndrome where wild success gets you associated with the good and the bad.

Enterprise Java is extremely slow, over-engineered, complex, that's where the majority of hate comes from. Then they had their security debacle, coupled with a couple strange roadmap changes, and being bought out by Oracle, an unpopular company for different reasons.

Java the language then sat mired by the corporate world and went nowhere for almost a decade (java 6, 7, 8).

Oh, and don't forget Billy, wonder why C# has made such a comeback in recent years. It's a nice(r) more modern language, it's not that great, come on...and I say this currently working in it full time.

So yeah political prop and the normal stuff popularity brings with it. It has also happened to JS too...

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