[taude]

A few years ago, I was really impressed with Vertx and wanted to use it for a project. I was also into alternative JVM languages for awhile.

I feel like Java keeps getting better and better and the compelling argument for the alt JVM languages is getting less interesting. (Except for something like Cloujure which still looks super interesting to me.).

Thoughts from someone whos worked with Groovy/Grails, Scala/Play, Jython, and Kotlin....

[zmmmmm]

> I feel like Java keeps getting better and better and the compelling argument for the alt JVM languages is getting less interesting

I keep going back to Java optimistically thinking the major problems will be solved but it's always hell compared to coding in Kotlin or Groovy (which I switch back and forth every couple of days). While it's true some fundamental things have been addressed, there's just so much missing from the ergonomics of Java that it is syntatically constrained from fixing, and philosophicaly poorly positioned to address.

[The_Colonel]

Java is adding some new stuff, but its core is still rotten with NPEs everywhere, mutability by default etc.

[MrBuddyCasino]

I thought so too, that Java will close the gap eventually and have data classes etc., but the truth is that Kotlin is quite a different language because it has a different philosophy (developer ergonomics, stronger functional style support, first class functions, immutability), and some things cannot be fixed in Java (NPE, static keyword, generics, operator overloading).

[soulnothing]

I agree with you. I think the next few JDK versions will bring back a lot of java devs. There was even a talk at the recent kotlin conf around it.

A lot of the back-end Kotlin I see. Is really java lite. A lot of the beneficial features I see of the language aren't really being used. At that point, why not just use Java?

I make use of a ton of features outside of Java. But I'm a very small minority from what I've seen.