I haven’t touched PHP since college, so about a decade, but back then I compared it to a very disorganized but well equipped toolbox. Everything you need to do your projects is there, but it’s scattered through 12 different unorganized drawers and cubbies, there’s an annoying mix of metric and imperial stuff, plus some random bits and bobs you inherited from your grandfather that you have no idea what they do.
I’ve used Java 21 pretty extensively, and it’s still comically bad compared to various alternatives, even apples-to-apples alternatives like C#. The only reason to use Java is that you’ve already been using Java.
it’s still comically bad compared to various alternatives, even apples-to-apples alternatives like C#.
I’d be interested to hear why. IMO Java has the superior ecosystem, runtime(s!), and community. The best part is that you don’t even HAVE to use java to access all this - you can just use kotlin, groovy, scala,… instead.
In terms of the language itself, while it (still) lacks some more modern language features, it has improved massively in that area as well, and they’re improving at a significant rate still. It also suffers from similar issues as PHP, where it has some old APIs that they don’t want to get rid of (yet?), but overall it’s a solid language.
Java is a traditional and conservative language, which has its strong upsides, like the syntax being familiar to many people who haven’t used the language before. It’s a language that brought us the JVM, gave a job to many people and established fundamentals for other languages to inspire and improve on.
If you don’t like Java, you can just use another language for the JVM, like Scala, Kotlin or Clojure.
You only named one upside, I can’t think of any other, and C-like syntax is pretty common, so it’s not much of an upside. It’s at least debatable whether the JVM is a good thing at all - the majority of languages get along perfectly well without it, and there’s no reason to believe the ones that do target it wouldn’t be doing just fine if it didn’t exist. It’s weird to say Java gave a job to anybody - the demand to have software written resulted in programmers being hired; if Java hadn’t been pushed on the market by Sun, it would have just been another language. Java didn’t establish any fundamentals at all, it just borrowed from other places. While all three of the other languages you mention are interesting, for sure, I’m not sure why somebody who doesn’t like Java should limit themselves to JVM languages.
Imagine unironically praising Java.
The one thing I can say about java; the kinds of people who like Java tend to really like Java. Everyone else just leaves them to it.
And the people hating on it somehow never used any version above 8, which is 10 years old and EOL.
Same could be said about PHP
Having used PHP and Java extensively in my career, it’s always entertaining to read what people think about these languages.
I haven’t touched PHP since college, so about a decade, but back then I compared it to a very disorganized but well equipped toolbox. Everything you need to do your projects is there, but it’s scattered through 12 different unorganized drawers and cubbies, there’s an annoying mix of metric and imperial stuff, plus some random bits and bobs you inherited from your grandfather that you have no idea what they do.
Oh I’m firmly in the second camp. They can use whatever version they like, as long as I don’t have to go near it.
I’ve used Java 21 pretty extensively, and it’s still comically bad compared to various alternatives, even apples-to-apples alternatives like C#. The only reason to use Java is that you’ve already been using Java.
I’d be interested to hear why. IMO Java has the superior ecosystem, runtime(s!), and community. The best part is that you don’t even HAVE to use java to access all this - you can just use kotlin, groovy, scala,… instead.
In terms of the language itself, while it (still) lacks some more modern language features, it has improved massively in that area as well, and they’re improving at a significant rate still. It also suffers from similar issues as PHP, where it has some old APIs that they don’t want to get rid of (yet?), but overall it’s a solid language.
Java is a traditional and conservative language, which has its strong upsides, like the syntax being familiar to many people who haven’t used the language before. It’s a language that brought us the JVM, gave a job to many people and established fundamentals for other languages to inspire and improve on. If you don’t like Java, you can just use another language for the JVM, like Scala, Kotlin or Clojure.
and inspired C#, which is pretty rad! (humble opinion… preparing for downvotes because I don’t get the feeling lemmy is where M$ devs hang out)
Only a fool could miss the value C# has when used to solve the proper problems :)
Totally! Thanks 😊
You only named one upside, I can’t think of any other, and C-like syntax is pretty common, so it’s not much of an upside. It’s at least debatable whether the JVM is a good thing at all - the majority of languages get along perfectly well without it, and there’s no reason to believe the ones that do target it wouldn’t be doing just fine if it didn’t exist. It’s weird to say Java gave a job to anybody - the demand to have software written resulted in programmers being hired; if Java hadn’t been pushed on the market by Sun, it would have just been another language. Java didn’t establish any fundamentals at all, it just borrowed from other places. While all three of the other languages you mention are interesting, for sure, I’m not sure why somebody who doesn’t like Java should limit themselves to JVM languages.
Java is good. Supporting Java legacy is bad
Java good
Opinion bad
Java: Not all poo poo.
Java is awesome. There ya go
Oh yes, let’s pick on the weak programming languages because haha funi