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by kaba0
1414 days ago
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What?? C++ is perhaps the biggest language I can think of followed by Swift. C# is well on the path of C++. But Java? It only has classes, inheritance (no multiple inheritance as c++), interfaces, objects which are instances of said classes, 7 primitive types and I am basically at the end of java’s feature list. Lambdas are often hated because they were implemented at first as classes with a single method (they no longer compile to that), so they are syntactic sugar only in a way. Classes can have static methods as well, and there are 3 visibility modifiers (which are also language feature of Go, just implicit in naming convention). Everything else is library calls in the language. |
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Not even close. There are quite a few keywords that modify behavior, including abstract, final, transient, synchronized, etc. You also have method overloading, including constructors which use a separate syntax from normal method declaration. Java also relies heavily on non-linear control flow thanks to exception handling. Go has panics, but it isn’t normal to see them in my experience, and indicates a serious bug with your code, whereas Java exceptions are extremely normal to see… but that doesn’t mean non-linear control flow is simple.
All Java classes have implicit methods like toString and equals, which you need to be aware of, and then this also lets you override the behavior of the equals method… yet you can’t override any operator, for some reason. And the actual equals operator is not at all what the average person expects when they’re getting started in Java, since it is referential equality, not value equality, except when it isn’t. I guess it is “simple” that the language lets you override the equals method, since that is consistent with other methods, but why is it a method at all? Why doesn’t the equals operator just do the expected thing, which would be equivalent to calling an invisible, non-overridable equals method? If no operator should be overridable, then no operator should be overridable, and the equals method is effectively an operator since the regular equals operator is just a footgun most of the time, except for the cases where it is performing value equality checks. Java has other footguns that stem from the language, not the standard library, like hashCode. I could go on, but really, why bother?
If you only want to talk about the basic features of the language and ignore the many keywords and edge cases you can run into in the syntax, then even C++ is simple. It’s the interaction of all these features that makes the language complex, including the implicit nullability of almost everything.
> there are 3 visibility modifiers (which are also language feature of Go, just implicit in naming convention).
Java actually has four access modifiers, not three, one of them is just implicit.[0] Go only has the notion of public and private, and private in Go is probably closer to the "default" access modifier in Java.
Compare to actually smaller languages like Go, or really small languages like Lua, Lisp, Tcl, or Smalltalk.
Java isn’t the worst language by a long shot, but it is one I’m unlikely to intentionally pick for anything.
You’ve left a bunch of comments all around this thread defending Java against even the smallest slights. I’m not interested in debating pointless aspects of Java forever this morning. I’ve used Java. I’ve used C++. I’ve used many languages in many contexts. You may disagree with my conclusions, and that’s fine. In my experience, Go takes less code and is less error prone than Java, in addition to being nicer to deploy and run. That's enough for me to choose it over Java, even if Go isn't perfect either.
[0]: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/access-modifiers-java/