Why is Java not discussed on HN anymore? | Hacker News Reader

Why is Java not discussed on HN anymore?

5 pointsshadykiller10 comments

It may be a presumption, but a long time I have'nt seen java threads. Is it because of ORACLE or the language itself ?

It is probably because most people (whether they work in the language or not) don't find Java very interesting, and people don't have any incentive to post about uninteresting topics.

Java is a general purpose language that frankly doesn't do any single thing well compared to today's alternatives. It still has value as a general purpose, "jack of all trades" language but this is becoming less relevant today.

For general purpose computing, Go is catching up and beating Java in some performance benchmarks.

For web application development, Ruby and Python have come with less ceremony for years compared to Java and J2EE. Also, Javascript with Node.js and the exploding ecosystem around JS frontend frameworks make Java less relevant.

For concurrency-related challenges, FP alternatives like Scala and Clojure are winning hearts and minds while allowing people to continue to utilize the mature, solid parts of the JVM ecosystem.

One area where Java remains dominant is in Android development, but the language doesn't seem to be evolving there in comparison to the way ObjectiveC is evolving alongside iOS.

Remember the rise / fall / rise of java thread a few days back ? Java is discussed on HN. You must have missed the post.

Two recent posts:

Learn Java in Minutes (73 points, 2 days ago, 50 comments) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969685

"Practical Artificial Intelligence Programming With Java" by Mark Watson (91 points, 4 days ago | flag | 41 comments) http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5963448

While my view isn't exactly unbiased since I do work primarily in the land of .Net, I feel like the world has the tools to move past it. It no longer seems to do anything 'the best' and unless you really need cross-platform compatibility, there are better options.

That combined with some of the blunders associated with it's management and of course, Oracle being Oracle, it's not really as attractive as it once was.

That said, I'd imagine that it will still be around and popular for some time, but I wouldn't be surprised if it fades in popularity.

I think people don't talk about it because it's not new and it's therefore not cool.

With the number of financial institutions that have systems build on Java (for good reason, its mature, performant, has many many tools an frameworks) as well as many other organisations, I don't think it's going to disappear any time soon.

On the other hand, there are many languages, databases, and frameworks that are regularly crop up on HN over time that will probably disappear soon. But they are more interesting to talk about so they make the news.

Yeah, exactly. It is not cool and many people know it well even if they are not using it on a daily basis. They should know it because it is a significant thing with all the technologies around it - and you should know it from all the things built with Java.

You can ask the same question for C,C++ - people use those too. And right; will we talk about Ruby and Python in the next five years?

http://www.paulgraham.com/pypar.html

Some would argue python has entered into more of the mainstream now and the "python" PG refer's to in that article is probably different now (Go, Scala, Clojure, Haskell, etc. come to mind)

But the spirit of the article is still correct

Where you been?

3days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969685

2days ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5978934

i remember seeing a few posts about Java 0days a while back.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com