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by sreque 3372 days ago
Take a look at a java codebase that uses:

  * Complex DI frameworks (Spring Bean*Processors, event listeners, XML config)
  * classpath scanning-based autowiring (See Spring @Component)
  * aspect weaving-based autowiring (See Spring @Configurable)
  * Code littered with annotations that invite aspect-based pointcuts
  * Complex ORMs like hibernate that are incredibly difficult to use properly
And you'll start to get an idea of how ridiculous things can be. Golang is making a huge mistake for not adding Generics. 99.9% of the complexity in a typical Java codebase has zero to do with generics and everything to do with the insane abuses of the JVM classloading system that the java community has subjected itself to, as well abuses of overly complex libraries like Spring and Hibernate.

If the Java community allowed itself to write simple golang-like code the majority of the time, there'd be much less defection to golang in my opinion.
1 comments
kasey_junk 3372 days ago
There is nothing language specific or magic about those things. You could (and you will see people) write those things in go as the language starts getting more adoption.

Go goes further and encourages code gen, so that will probably be the way you start seeing terrible frameworks being built.

In any case, "configuration as code" doesn't seem like a good definition of "magic" to me.

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sreque 3372 days ago
My point exactly. The issue isn't java the language. The issue is the flexibility of the JVM runtime and how people are abusing it.

Also, if load-time aspect-weaving and classpath-scanning-based autodiscovery don't count as magic to you, then not much will. Code generation at least has the huge, huge, humongous advantage that you have code on disk that you can read and debug.

I also admire Racket's macro system for coming with IDE support for introspecting and debugging the code generated by macros. Macros are a much better design because they generally run at compile time and they generally only make local code transformations that are much easier to reason about, as opposed to the sweeping global changes a weaver will make.

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