[_asummers]

Much of the Java+Patterns=<3 stuff came from java lacking syntax for functions that didn't involve creating an entire anonymous inner class with an apply function; the Strategy pattern is an excellent example of a pattern that just goes away when you can pass functions around. There just are not good ways to express certain solutions without using at least one or two, for any sufficiently large piece of software, without that syntax. And if your language is making what you're doing awkward, it's probably not how most people are going to code. Guava had an entire disclaimer in their functional documentation that essentially said "whenever you reach into this toolbox, think about if it's really what you want". Now that Java8 has syntax for them, we should see people reaching more for Streams and their functional methods.

Now, that said, it's often more tempting and easier to just add complexity, which results in crazy codebases. It's much harder, especially under pressure of deadlines, to REMOVE patterns as they don't make sense anymore, which gives us what people think of as enterprise Java. Not all Java is like that, I promise.

[mohaine]

Sadly, it seems that most of the java devs who created these monstrosities learned the wrong lessons.

As far as I can tell they seem to think total lines of code was the real issue (It couldn't be the Abstractions/Patterns, those are good!) and are now on a kick to move as many lines of code as possible to annotations. I call this "Annotation based programming" and any new problem starts with a google search since how any tool kit handles something is pure guesswork.

[_asummers]

If you're going to denounce annotations, you must also denounce decorators in both Python and Javascript. Annotations are a super powerful tool that get used too much. To borrow from Lisp: data > functions > macros. They should be the last tool you reach to, in order to remove a bunch of repetition with the intention of simplifying your code. "Could you do what you're trying to do with a library of functions that you simply call into? Or some sort of composition? Or maybe a parent class?" type questions should be asked before you reach for any sort of metaprogramming.

Take a look at the Retrofit library from Square for a good example of usage of annotations. To the original Spring link posted, while there's lots of annotations, they're replacing the XML that used to plague Spring projects, which I find much more magical. At least I can jump to an annotation's definition in my IDE.