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by throwaway894345 22 days ago
> Java being slow is most often a pebcak scenario

Am I the only one who thinks "pebkac" is a self-own? If you're blaming your users for the tool, it feels like maybe your tool is just hard to use properly. I have no doubt that there are big, fast, low latency Java systems out there, but why does it take so much extra effort to build these systems in Java compared with other languages? Maybe it would be better to have competent developers focus their attention beyond managing Java's shortcomings?

I'm not even hating on Java here--I actually like the JVM quite a bit, but blaming users feels like an implicit admission.
2 comments
frollogaston 22 days ago
pebkac is always the excuse with Java. "Oh, you didn't pass 6 -Xmxsmxmwhatever flags to make the JVM do sane things with your memory? You did stuff the regular way instead of whatever decorator-heavy framework? You didn't use this new feature they added last release? Were you born yesterday?"

And then there is real pebkac. Java code tends to be the worst, even though there are more newb-friendly things out there like JS. Sure you can choose to be a good programmer and use Java, but if you're being offered to join a "Java team," that doesn't usually mean good things.

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MaxBarraclough 22 days ago
> Am I the only one who thinks "pebkac" is a self-own?

There's no such thing as a programming language that guarantees excellent performance regardless of programming competence.

> why does it take so much extra effort to build these systems in Java compared with other languages?

They didn't say that.

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throwaway894345 22 days ago
> They didn't say that.

The entire premise of the conversation is that other languages allow us to write idiomatic code and get good performance, and the parent's position was that Java requires "competent developers". So yes, the parent did say that, however...

> There's no such thing as a programming language that guarantees excellent performance regardless of programming competence.

No one made any claim remotely like this. This is a very obvious straw man argument. What was argued was that you can get decent performance from other languages without additional competence beyond idiomatic code.

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