Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by throwaway2037 1210 days ago
Your list of programming languages excluded Java. Please ignore this reply if Java is included.

Are you aware of the amazing Java debugger feature of "Drop to Frame"? Combined with "hot-injection" (compile new code, then inject into current debug'd JVM), it is crazy and amazing. (I love C#, but the hot-injection feature is much worse than Java -- more than 50% of the time, C# compiler rejects my hot-injection, but about 80% of the time, JVM accepts my hot-injection.) When working on source code where it is very difficult to acquire data for the algorithm, having the ability to inspect in a debugger, make minor changes the the algorithm, then re-compile, inject new class/method defs, the drop to frame, the re-exec the same code in the same debug session is incredibly powerful.
1 comments
arghnoname 1206 days ago
Yes, that sounds pretty cool and it doesn't take a lot of imagination to see the utility in this. I've done a lot work on lower level software, often enough on platforms where the debuggers are tough to get working well anyway.

The plus side of less capable tooling is it tends to limit how complex software can be--the pain is just too noticeable. I haven't liked java in the past because it seems very difficult without the tooling and I never had to do enough java to learn that stuff. Java's tooling does seem quite excellent once it is mastered.

link
throwaway2037 1204 days ago
This part: "I haven't liked java in the past because it seems very difficult without the tooling"

If you are a low level programmer, I understand your sentiment. A piece of advice, when you need to use Java (or other JVM languages), just submit to all the bloat -- use an IDE, like IntelliJ, that needs 4GB+ of RAM. The increase in programmer productivity is a wild ride coming from embedded and kernel programming. (The same can be said for C#.)

link