[oftenwrong]

I prefer functional programming, and have a background in functional programming, but I still primarily work with Java, and it is currently my go-to for any project. In my opinion, Java as a language is gross and unlovable, but the runtime, the development tooling, and selection of libraries and other integrations is about as good as it gets.

I feel like I am continuously looking for a better alternative, but it's hard to overcome the practicality of using something with such immense buy-in. For example, nearly all major SaaS offer a Java SDK, or have Java-specific docs. They want the big companies to be their customers, and they know they use Java. I am all too happy to benefit from that.

It should also be noted that Java the language is rapidly being enhanced with features inspired by functional programming. For example, sum types (in the form of sealed classes) have been added to the language, and ML-style pattern matching with compile-time exhaustiveness checking is in the pipeline. More on the platform side, Java now has a REPL (JShell).

Of course, Java codebases you encounter in the wild are very likely to make you want to cry. The world of Java development has a lot of bad taste and questionable practices enshrined as best practices. That said, the Java community is slowly shifting toward a better style.

[zonotope]

> I prefer functional programming, and have a background in functional programming, but I still primarily work with Java... In my opinion, Java as a language is gross and unlovable, but the runtime, the development tooling, and selection of libraries and other integrations is about as good as it gets.

It sounds like Clojure is perfect for you then. You have all the upsides of Java you mention here with Clojure because it's hosted on the JVM (among other platforms). You can use Java libraries and SDKs seamlessly from Clojure, but the language itself was designed specifically for a functional style from the beginning.

[oftenwrong]

I consider a static type system to be a must-have. If Clojure was more like Typed Racket on the JVM, I would already be using it.

[valenterry]

Then Scala is your language!

[robertfw]

> the runtime, the development tooling, and selection of libraries and other integrations is about as good as it gets

This is a great feature of Clojure, being able to access all of the benefits of the Java ecosystem and the zillions of hours invested into it.

There may not always be a ready-made Clojure wrapper over libraries, but the java interop tools are excellent and writing your own interface into a library is usually quite straightforward.

[deckard1]

> The world of Java development has a lot of bad taste and questionable practices enshrined as best practices.

I've never seen a "best practice" that wasn't horrible dogma parroted by developers that can't do their own thinking.

As I get older I care less and less about FP, OOP, imperative, and language fads. Or Martin Fowler. Especially Martin Fowler. What I really crave and value over anything else: consistency. I don't want to look at the code base like an archaeologist, digging through layers of fads. "And this code is when James and Adam were going through an ORM phase with such-and-such library" Please no. I don't have enough remaining time in my life for this shit.

[novok]

I think java as a language is fine, it's all the java culture around it that makes it bad. Kotlin is a big improvement and I think it will eventually become the next java in java codebases as it expands out of the android world.

[pjmlp]

Nah, it will just fade away as Java adopts all features that are relevant to most of us.

If Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Azul, Amazon bring a KVM written in Kotlin, then I might consider it.

In the meantime it is just the language Android team is pushing to get rid of Android Java, while the offices next door are pushing ChromeOS/PWAs and Fuchsia.

[bedobi]

We've switched from Java to Kotlin with Arrow for all our back end work. We couldn't be happier, and we're not impressed with Java's attempts at playing catch-up.

"final var" anyone? Non-monadic, non-applicative "Optional"? No? Ok.

[pjmlp]

I can go fetch similar comments from online archives from every guest language on the JVM, CLR, WebBrowser.

The guest languages require additional tooling, duplicated libraries (because just using the platform libs isn't idiomatic, whatever), and then as the platform moves on the seamless FFI stops being so seamless, specially when the guest language decides being a guest language in just one platform isn't enough for its life achievements.

Eventually the platform language acquires enough features, which remove the spotlight from the guest languages, and projects start to migrate back, ah then the "Why X in Y" blog posts, with reference to "Why Y in X" start to appear.

As for Arrow, if you want Haskell, it already exists.

[bedobi]

Historically, I agree. But this time really is different. No other JVM language has backing or buy-in even remotely comparable to Kotlin, and it's more seamless than any other JVM language I've experienced.

For what it's worth, in case I come off as a die-hard Kotlin fan, I'm really not. I strongly disagree with many choices the designers make with Kotlin - there's too many to list, but the common theme is basically, as good as Kotlin is at discouraging the worst of Java, it still caters far too much to nonsensical Java practices IMO.

[pjmlp]

I doubt it, Kotlin has decided to be Android's darling, thus buying into Android Team's bias against modern Java (and JVM features) support, while at the same time JetBrains is trying to turn Kotlin into its own eco-system stretching into JavaScript, a native implementation which requires specific code patterns for KMM libraries, and Kotlin specific libraries.

Eventually Kotlin needs to decide which master it wants to follow.

Java only needs to bother with keep being Java, everything else in terms of OS and AOT/JIT/GC support is just a matter of picking the respective implementation with zero code changes.