[diego_moita]

> Java is still widely used. I'm looking forward to this -- there are some projects we can't take to Scala due to client concerns around a less mainstream language.

I hope I am wrong but I smell a trap here. Some time ago I implemented a solution (for .Net, that is) that employed some more modern techniques ( reflection, recursive lambdas, etc). Unfortunately many of the programmers in charge of maintaining my code were either interns from a local technical school or an outsourced company in India. They couldn't get their heads around the techniques I used. They thrashed my code, I ended with a bad reputation and lost the client. Not something I regret, anyway.

[bad_user]

I smell trolling, however considering this anecdote is genuine:

(1) interns should never be allowed to commit code in the master branch without a code review from a senior developer

(2) there are many competent developers in India, or around the world, so if your company needs to outsource, it can do so by being a little careful about who they employ

(3) if the above 2 are not possible, simply look for another job, because life is too short

[gav]

I can give many examples where I've handed code over and later there was problems due to less-skilled developers.

One good example I have is being called by a client who had a bug they couldn't fix in some code I had written years before. After looking into it, I found something like this:

    // ABC 1/1/2001 removed this call as we don't understand why it was being called
    // x = performImportantCalculationABC();

There are lots of terrible programmers out there. The average level of programming skills on HN is considerably higher than you'll find at most companies.

I've seen so much bad code written by people with senior job titles; confusing, ugly, inflexible, but working code.

[veb]

You're forgetting that the smarter programmers realise all they need to do is fix something really fast, so their managers are like, "oh my goodness, you're excellent!" but if you get caught up on the details, spend several weeks "fixing" something that your manager won't even see or understand, you're a shit programmer.

So really, you gotta get your priorities straight.

[KirinDave]

If your priority is "ingratiate yourself to your manager" then yeah, it's best to pick small superficial problems or prefer patch-job fixes. These decisions tend to be informed by how much technical debt the "short" fix makes.

But if a problem genuinely will take 6 weeks to solve, then it's probably a worthwhile problem to solve. Those sorts of problems tend to have far-reaching implications for sites and their ability to scale. The big question is when to solve it. Competent engineers know when to do this.

Managers who can't see this? Bad managers. Bad managers can kill a startup just as effectively as 'rockstar' engineers.

[jshen]

Your code looks bad to me. Either x isn't used at all later, or you set x then for some reason set it again which is bad.

[diego_moita]

No, I was not trolling. The key to understand the whole thing is that it was not a software company, but a construction company and I was there as a consultant.

For them, software is a cost, not a source of revenue. That's why they didn't implement rigorous practices such as code reviews. That's why they'd prefer the cheaper against the better coders. That's why I already followed your 3rd advice.

[jimbokun]

It's hard for me to think of a good reason why a construction company should be writing custom software, instead of buying something off the shelf.

[clavalle]

For the same reason any other large enterprise does...so many special cases in their organically grown 'systems' that it would be cheaper to get something custom coded than try to shoehorn their process into an off the shelf environment.

[xxpor]

(1) No one be allowed to commit code in the master branch without a code review from another developer

FTFY

[javajosh]

Funny, I've had it the other way: I was working on a project as a senior dev and had interns writing Godless functional code using Guava and Functional Java, and having a grand old time seeing how much concurrent code they could fit into a single statement.

The fact is that Java is not a functional language and to bolt on functional pieces and then ignore the imperative, OO nature of Java is stupid. Don't get me wrong, I love functional programming, but Java is not and will never be a functional programming language, and developers that hate on programmers who use a language in the manner in which it was intended to be used are the real fools.

It is a poor programmer indeed that writes pathological code (and functional code in Java is pathological) and then blames his team for not understanding it.

[flatline3]

There are significant lessons to be learned from functional programming, the least of which is the value of immutability in making complex systems comprehensible.

Immutability is almost completely necessary for easy-to-understand concurrency, and extremely helpful in designing easy-to-understand APIs and operations on in-memory-models.

It is a poor programmer indeed that discards the lessons of FP and instead writes purely imperative OO. Your interns may have been writing bad code, but it wasn't the "functional" part that was the problem.

[kamaal]

>>It is a poor programmer indeed that discards the lessons of FP and instead writes purely imperative OO. Your interns may have been writing bad code, but it wasn't the "functional" part that was the problem.

Functional code is not Idiomatic Java code, 99.99% of Java code, practices and projects do not have it. Now when you go and bolt functional code on top of it, you are putting a tough puzzle on top of the code.

Don't be surprised if people cannot understand such code. In fact its bad programming to write non idiomatic code in a language. It confuses people, puts wrong patterns and paradigms and places where they don't belong. The language syntax struggles to support such semantics and often the code looks like a difficult puzzle in itself. Such code is very difficult to maintain and saps your energy is focusing on the wrong issues.

[flatline3]

It's bad code to write idiomatic mutable imperative Java. I'm not willing to write worse code just because bad engineers can't get their head around basic concepts that are integral to reliability, composability, maintainabiliy, and correctness.

Maintaining 'idiomatic' Java written by an 'average' developer is far more difficult and disheartening than maintaining well-written Java based on lessons from FP.

[kamaal]

In this case you shouldn't use Java at all. Because if your use case requires functional programming then you must use a functional programming language. Force fitting a non native paradigm to a tool and then calling those who don't understand it as bad is not fair.

I'm good != Others are bad.

>>Maintaining 'idiomatic' Java written by an 'average' developer is far more difficult and disheartening than maintaining well-written Java based on lessons from FP.

More than 90% of the Java projects I know are chosen to written in Java because its easy, cheaper, quicker to hire the 'average developer'. And not because of the merits of Java itself. These days 'Knows to use eclipse' == 'Knows Java', even if all the programmer knows is basic syntax, its assumed he can code in Java using intellisense and code complete.

Most of the Java code written today is tool generated, any way.

[javajosh]

The benefits from immutability are well-known outside the functional world. Josh Bloch harped on that (and rightly so) quite a lot in "Effective Java".

Immutability in Java is great, and doesn't have a functional corequisite.

[flatline3]

Immutability generally requires and/or benefits from programming in a functional style.

[javajosh]

Now you are trolling, but since the community has long since moved past this news item, I'm just going to point it out and move on myself.

[yread]

Perhaps they didn't approve of your use of reflection? Your post sounds a bit like you would use it because you can create awesome looking code. It should be used rather seldom

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/429962/when-do-you-use-re...

[jmcqk6]

Are you kidding? Reflection is one of the most powerful parts of the .NET framework. Hell, the page you link to contains many examples of the different possibilities, but they're just a start. The only knock I know of against reflection is that it's a performance hit. If that's really the issue, write the code using reflection (it's going to be better code, most likely), and then see if performance is an issue. If it is, refactor out the reflection.

Reflection makes things possible that simply aren't possible without it. It can get rid of layers upon layers of complexity. It can shrink thousands of lines of code to fractions of that.

There is no reason to say that 'it should be used seldom.' It's a powerful tool and should be wielded along with every other tool in the toolbox.

[DrJokepu]

Yeah, I don't know about that. When I first discovered reflection, I was using it for everything. Initially it was awesome but then I've quickly realised that it's exactly the kind of thing that makes code a lot more complicated than it should be, especially with the deadly reflection + expression trees (runtime code generation) combo. It's really a dark path that you should stay away from. Basically, unless your problem involves having to get metadata about .NET assemblies, reflection is not the right solution. Code that's clever for the sake of cleverness is cool and entertaining but has no place in production.

[jmcqk6]

>When I first discovered reflection, I was using it for everything.

Well there's your problem. You have to use the right tool for the job. Reflection shouldn't be used for everything, and I wasn't suggesting that was the case. My point was that it shouldn't be avoided. It's damn helpful in a lot of different places, and to say outright that you're just not going to use it would be depriving yourself of a powerful toolset.

[edwinnathaniel]

Sometimes I find it a littl bit interesting that .NET community typically lag behind Java community in general (be careful interpreting general vs all).

In Java, the best known book that can be considered comparable with Jon Skeet book is written by Josh Bloch of SUN, Google, and API design fame. He literally suggested to avoid Reflection and use other features unless you are in the business of writing IDE, compiler, code analysis, etc.

I hvae done Reflection in the past and fow not to do that stupid move again and will spend more time figuring other solution. It is not about I cannot grasp Reflection but the code tend to be less elegant, less readable, and not compiled safe.

I would use dynamic languages if I found myself using Reflection a lot.

[edwinnathaniel]

Brrr. I wish I could edit all the typos I've made using iPad :(

[Zak]

It seems to me that many well-known "best" practices need to be considered with more context.

In an environment with a large, frequently changing team, heavy use of features that provide extra abstraction may result in less-skilled team members being confused. Most enterprise environments consider that normal. Most startups would fire a programmer who couldn't grasp reflection.

[spullara]

You lost me at reflection. That said, I think that some of the more advanced usages of lambda could be more difficult to understand.

[pjmlp]

Sounds familiar

[bsg75]

Programming by the lowest bidder rarely results in quality.