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by eurasiantiger 1752 days ago
This looks really promisi—wait, maven?!

^W
2 comments
jaytaylor 1752 days ago
Is this Java hate? Please chime in if I'm missing something, otherwise..

There's nothing inherently wrong with writing a programming language on top of the JVM or JVM-based build tools. It's a time tested platform in very widespread use, and in many instances the JVM is an excellent target to get things going.

The derision emanating from the low effort comment you submitted is misguided and / or misplaced. This is coming from someone who admittedly kind of enjoyed bashing on the ridiculousness of Java in the early days ('90s & '00s), but along with the JVM, it's grown into an incredible ecosystem and generally valuable resource to Get Stuff Done.

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iainmerrick 1752 days ago
It’s about Maven, not Java.

Having used Maven a bit in the past, I agree, it was awful. Simple tasks were complicated and error-prone, complex tasks were impossible.

It seems reasonable to ask why a trivial example program needs a huge boilerplate XML file.

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dathinab 1752 days ago
You didn't reach the part where you are told:

- It's parsed into an XML document.

- And: There are a number of XSL transformations that need to be done with the XML document in order to make it ready for compilation.

- Plus: Then transforming the XML document into a collection of .java files.

But hey, if this are the tools you are familiar with why not use them for you pet toy.

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