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Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

(thenewstack.io)
177 points chhum | 6 comments | 16 May 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.014s | source | bottom
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nelup20 ◴[16 May 25 21:01 UTC] No.44009800[source]▶
I personally appreciate Java (and the JVM) much more after having tried other languages/ecosystems that people kept saying were so much better than Java. Instead, I just felt like it was a "the grass is greener" every time. The only other language that I felt was an actual massive improvement is Rust (which so far has been a joy to work with).

It's a shame imo that it's not seen as a "cool" option for startups, because at this point, the productivity gap compared to other languages is small, if nonexistent.

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bsaul ◴[16 May 25 21:29 UTC] No.44009952[source]▶
Funny. I've been trying rust for the past 2 months fulltime, and i'm really wondering how you can call it a "joy to work with" when compared to java, at least for server development.

Rust feels like walking on a minefield, praying to never meet any lifetime problem that's going to ruin your afternoon productivity ( recently lost an afternoon on something that could very well be a known compiler bug, but on a method with such a horrible signature that i never can be sure. in the end i recoded the thing with macros instead).

The feeling of typesafety is satisfying , i agree. But calling the overall experience a "joy" ?

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1. mynameisash ◴[16 May 25 21:45 UTC] No.44010045{3}[source]▶
> I've been trying rust for the past 2 months fulltime,

> recently lost an afternoon on something that could very well be a known compiler bug

With respect, at two months, you're still in the throes of the learning curve, and it seems highly unlikely you've found a compiler bug. Most folks (myself included) struggled for a few months before we hit the 'joyful' part of Rust.

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2. johnisgood ◴[16 May 25 22:24 UTC] No.44010298[source]▶
Okay, but I have hit the joyful part of some other languages long before a few months. What gives?
3. bsaul ◴[16 May 25 22:30 UTC] No.44010342[source]▶
i didn't "find" it. As i said, it's a well known one : https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/110338

Simply using axum with code using multiple layers of async was enough.

But then again, it looked like this bug (the error message is the same), however at this point i'm really unsure if it's exactly the same. The error message and the method signature was so atrocious that i just gave up and found a simpler design using macros that dodged the bullet.

4. heavyset_go ◴[16 May 25 22:38 UTC] No.44010401[source]▶
IME, new users do weird things that can expose bugs no one ran into because they wouldn't think to do things the weird way.
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5. bsaul ◴[16 May 25 23:06 UTC] No.44010594[source]▶
I hope the same, and TBH it's the only reason i'm keeping up developing that backend in rust. I hope that in the end, it's going to improve my style.

Go felt the same way (but with a much lower order of magnitude) : you feel like bumping into language limitations, but once you learn to do it "simply" in go, your style will have changed into something much more elegant.

As for the bug in question, it has been quite "popular" for about 5 years now, and is actively tracked : https://github.com/rust-lang/rust/issues/110338. Nothing really weird. Just async hitting the limits of the current rust design.

6. vips7L ◴[17 May 25 01:51 UTC] No.44011452[source]▶
> With respect, at two months, you're still in the throes of the learning curve,

It shouldn’t take 2 months of full time programming to beat the learning curve.