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Comment by hellothere1337 | Hacker News Reader

Java in general is deprecated anyway, the sooner enterprises realize this the better

Thanks for the reminder, we'll get to it as soon at the COBOL migration to Java is completed

enterprises

That's not really true to the slightest. If anything, the advances in the JVM and the language itself have been making it even more attractive and distinct from its nearest competitors, making the gap even wider in its favor.

Do you know C#? Learn it and every time you write any Java you'll think to yourself "I wish I was writing C# instead".

It does have some nice features, but it can get overwhelming quickly with the pace they're being added at, not to mention some features being quite nuanced or interact with each other in intricate ways.

At least for the time being, Java has exhaustive pattern matching and proper enums, whereas C# doesn't.

What's not proper about C# enums?

They are not distinct types. You can pass ints to methods that accept enums, even if they are outside the enum defined range.

Right, enterprises should get rid of Java just the same way as they did with COBOL... Oh, wait...

I get that HNers lean towards the web and Startup/throw-away culture, but do people really not get that some systems have to run decades?

I hate to tell that, and I'm not trying to be snarky, but apparently not.

Also, many younger developers I chatted with don't understand long living applications and what "use boring tech" means.

> what "use boring tech" means.

Of course we do. It means you use Node 16 instead of 18 because it’s LTS. 2 whole years of support!

I would be pretty worried about the potential for the license cost to skyrocket over those decades

Well, then don’t pay for a commercial license that includes paid support if you don’t want to pay, it is that easy. All of these articles are FUD.

As well you should be and plan for that by either not going with a tech that will increment that way or making damn sure you are profitable enough to pay the bills.

Also, guess what runs that whole “cloud” thingy they deploy their fancy microservices onto..

Java is not going anywhere at the moment https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2022/03/28/language-rankings-1-2...

Legacy code just means anything currently in production I suppose.

In some sense that's not far from the truth. As soon as something goes to production it starts slipping out of sync with how it could/should be and the layers of dependencies start accumulating that make it harder to change (unless it's just dead code no one is using I suppose).

That is exactly my point in my presentation "If it works, it’s legacy: analysis of legacy code": https://www.adacore.com/uploads/products/SSAS-Presentations/...

If your software will be used, you are "building the legacy systems of tomorrow".

That is painfully close to being true, and truth is, no one wants to maintain code.

There is no other platform language that would be remotely as good in performance, observability and maintainability at the same time.

I do wish it would all get replaced by C#/.NET. With no exaggeration, it's better in every conceivable way. Java has no reason to exist beyond inertia when C# can replace it.

Except you're locked into a more confined ecosystem. It's smooth as long as you're on the happy path dictated by Microsoft.

At least Java is open, alternative implementations are present, and can be run on anywhere and everywhere.

C# is open and alternative implementations like Mono exist.

Mono is just a side project of Microsoft. A commoditized alternative to Microsoft's toolchain.

Miguel was conned into believing that it'll be completely independent like OpenJDK, but it didn't turn out like that.

IOW, C# is as open as VSCode.

OpenJDK is a side project of Oracle, too.

Not really. Plus, Red Hat Software, MS, Apple, Amazon, IBM, SAP are all developers for OpenJDK, as well as contributions from other major firms.

does it have an open source debugger yet?

https://isdotnetopen.com/

> Except you're locked into a more confined ecosystem.

The Microsoft ecosystem can become more confining if you continue to operate as if its 2008 and follow all their old patterns (e.g. IIS, Azure, et. al.)

For the more clever developer in 2023, you take .NET 7 and skip over all of the Azure-integrated bullshit. You can throw away 100% of their complex AspNetCore libraries in favor of minimal API integrations. You can do everything your way and run it wherever you want.

The entrapment in the Microsoft ecosystem is of a substantially different nature than entrapment in the Java ecosystem. Becoming mired in Microsoft licensing concerns is a matter of technical competence. Becoming mired in Oracle licensing concerns is a matter of business competence.

Instead, I just don't use Microsoft's stack, and install OpenJDK. That floats my boat for my "Enterprise Language for long-haul trucking" needs.

The other thing I do is being able to use multiple languages and using the right one for the job, and ensure that all are supported by GCC suite.

Well, I'm on a very different niche than many software developers here, but at least it gives me more freedom to do what I want to do, and how I accomplish these.

That's quite an exaggeration. The JVM philosophy is different from .NET's, even though there is a large overlap with them being VM based languages. C# has gotten too complex as a language, with so many features. C# also exposes lower level constructs, whereas the JVM tries to do a lot of different optimizations instead. The JVM has the best GCs in the industry, and the best monitoring and observability through JFR.

> C# has gotten too complex as a language, with so many features.

I really wouldn't say so. All the new features are convenient and easy to understand, especially if you have Visual Studio to teach them to you (type if (x == null) x = new .. and you get a popup to transform it into the new operator). It's not a zoo like C++.

Compare C#'s colored functions to Java's Loom. .NET has only one GC implementation, so if it doesn't work for your use case (low latency), you have no choice but to migrate to a different platform.

To be fair, I think they get around the lack of GC choices by rewriting slow paths to code that uses value types and low level code.

You forgot the JVM (and the tools built around it, so for example you can monitor / profile your app in production etc), and the massive galaxy of 3rd party libs that is the Java ecosystem.

Whether you like Java (the language) or not, Java (the ecosystem) will not go away. In fact, it is alive and well, and I would guess it is at least an order of magnitude bigger and more mature than the .net ecosystem.

If you don't like Java (the language), you can choose Kotlin (Java++), Scala (Haskell--), or other languages (eg. Groovy?)...

> 3rd party libs

A lot of this is the inertia I alluded to. There's no reason this couldn't all be written in C#. Kind of like the C++/Rust debate.

> There's no reason this couldn't all be written in C#.

There's no reason it couldn't be written Brainfuck.

doesn't mean it's a good idea

I don't get how you can't see your in the same sinking boat of tech?

I sadly only get to use C# for side projects and the Unity3D game I contribute to. Work is all Java which is where my perspective comes from.

Except it's not really a sinking boat. Both the JVM and .NET are doing quite well.

Except for the size of the respective ecosystems, the performance of the runtime and longevity guarantees.

java is not just server.

the worlds largest mobile phone platform is java. this is all the billions of people who live in Asia.

its not gonna go away in our lifetimes.

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