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Java at 30: Interview with James Gosling

(thenewstack.io)
185 points chhum | 3 comments | 16 May 25 13:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.683s | source
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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. worik ◴[16 May 25 21:56 UTC] No.44010130[source]▶
> I've been trying rust for the past 2 months fulltime

Rust has a horrid learning curve

I've programmed for decades in many languages, and I felt the same as you

Persevere.

Surrender! to compile

Weather the ferocious storm

You will find, true bliss

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2. bsaul ◴[16 May 25 22:50 UTC] No.44010497[source]▶
I am keeping up, but honestly i feel like rust dev is a bit like a trap : people like us love challenges and solving technical problems. So whenever we "triumph" over a rust tricky compilation issue, we feel intense gratification in solving it.

However, at some point you have to ask yourself why you're accepting to face all those challenges. Is it worth it ? When was the last time i faced a race condition when developping a backend ?

The reason i started with rust was for a very specific need on building a cross-platform library (including wasm), and that was a good justification, and i'm happy that i did. However now that i'm using it for the server as well and face the same kind of challenges, i seriously question whether this is a wise choice.

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3. worik ◴[17 May 25 02:24 UTC] No.44011576[source]▶
Generally Rust is the wrong choice.

Generally garbage collectors are very worthwhile

But whe you need it, it is so much better than C or C++