Thank you very much for your reply and your time!

I will have a look at either Scala or F#. I guess it doesn’t really matter which one, just as long as I learn something new 8).

The languages that you describe all fit into one category; eagerly evaluated, imperative languages. They also possess very poor type systems (an entire topic on its own). So, if I were to try to answer your question, I’d really focus on the underlying premise of these languages, rather than a specific language. Java has the unique attribute of having an incredibly low barrier to entry. I see it as the very bottom of the intellectual pool, despite displaying very little different to other languages such as C/C++, C#, etc.

Nevertheless, I try not to concern myself in such “wars”. I am not a member of the “Java tribe” or the “Scala tribe” or any tribe. I spend any time I have, learning the deeper programming language theory itself, not what the latest marketing buzz is. This allows me to learn and use different languages very efficiently.

I strongly encourage you to take a look at Scala or F# and if you have any questions, please feel free to contact me somehow! I can also point you to others who would be most willing to help.

Have a good one

I stumbled upon your blog while searching for articles about Scala.

Anyhow, I was wondering why Java is such a bad language (apart for causing self-delusion .)

My background is mainly procedural. I learned basic (maybe I was doomed from the start?) and assembly on the commodore 64. I moved on the C and then C++. I was really enjoying C++, but after reading books like thinking in C++ and effective C++, I got to realize that the amount of effort and dedication to learn all the C++ subtleties was quite high.

I then got the opportunity to use Java and quite likes it’s simplicity.

I later got into C sharp doing web in asp.net. Sometimes vb.net too.

Except in the case of C++, it looks to me that Java, C# and VB.net are essentially all the same. Even more with virtual machines where we are the opportunity to use the same libraries across different languages.

Sorry this post is getting really long and pointless.

I guess my question really is, not having been exposed functional programming, what is really missing or wrong in the Java language that makes it bad? I’m eager to learn this to improve myself as a developer.

On a side note, have you also tried F#, which is also a mix of functional and OO concepts like Scala?

You’ll probably respond that it’s Java’s failings that have caused this mass adoption by the intellectually challenged programmer (Visual Basic comes to mind as an example supporting this argument). But even the intellectually gifted programmer should acknowledge the existence of the masses’ wisdom as well as stupidity. This leads me to conclude that we should judge a language based on it’s features, not based on the people who use it.

Java belongs relegated to the miserable little server apps it was designed for.

It was not designed for that! (That’s one of the reasons why it’s not that good at it.)

Java was designed for mobility: running untrusted code on your CPU. It was used in the browser (HotJava, to be precise) before it was ever used on a server.

Java belongs relegated to the miserable little server apps it was designed for.

Java didn’t make me dumb, rather, I think that taught properly it’s a good learning language for OOP, specifically a good primer for C++. A couple years on Java, and you’ll be so sick of single-inheritance that C++ will be positively liberating when you finally switch!

Java does have the curious side effect of gathering all the idiots, since it is the gateway programming language. That is rather to be expected, however. In fact, I think the main side effect of Java is just over-eager optimization. Strings being an immutable type is something that no one remembers; I see string concatentation all over the place, so people tend to think that Java is very slow. It isn’t very slow, it’s just plain slow. So they come to C++ trying to effect every optimization possible, which is annoying, but I’ll grow out of it, eventually.

So, in other words, you’re trying to answer the question “which came first, Java, or the novice programmer?”

– a parady of what I think of java people –
ac vs dc for power transmission

java people == lets use dc its so much easier, we don’t need transformers every where - ugh omg look at all these transformers, lets put dc on the lines, sure its a little inefficient but look @ how much money you will be saving on having those little transformers everywhere, omg and everyone would have to learn how ac power dynamics work … you have power factors sin waves all over omg omg omg its so complicated!

everyone else == ‘watching java squirm’ while they do their thing, ac style!

like bjarne stroustrup says, people are not complaining that computers are becoming faster but that battery lives are getting shorter in comparison.

I’m a one-language developer and Java is that language. I studied others back in school (including both basic and advanced Haskell), but fell in love with Java when I began working.
I know Java quite well although I’m not able to keep fully up-to-date on emerging libraries and patterns. What’s most important, however, is that I know what Java can and cannot do, what it’s good at and where it sucks.
There are problems where another language would probably be better (subjective opinion, of course), but I stick with Java. I, and my co-workers, value the ease-of-transition and maintainability of using the same language for our tasks, out-weighing the sometimes awkward solutions produced. Best-too-for-the-job should apply, but we’ve found the raised barriers for knowledge transfers to be unacceptable.
Hey, maybe that’s our brain damage right there?! I’m sorry you’ve encountered so many Java zombies, but I’ll stick with it for now.