[zainny]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Android yet. When you add in the Android factor, Java is probably still one of the most widely used programming languages today.

It's funny the article straight away brings up the verbosity argument as well. You want to talk about verbosity - take a look at Objective-C and Cocoa (again, hugely popular today!)!

Personally, I quite like Java.

[EpicEng]

Popular in terms of use, yes, but liked? I don't know, I doubt it. Android and iOS essentially force you to use Java or Objective-C respectively. I don't hate Java, but I don't like it either. It lacks quality of life features that other, similar languages have had for years. I can't stand writing code in it if I don't have to (and don't get me started on Objective-C...)

From what I hear from others and read on a weekly basis, few people enjoy writing Java code. It may not be dying in terms of numbers, but given an option to use something else those numbers would likely drop very quickly.

[fizx]

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses." -- Bjarne Stroustrup

[JanezStupar]

Bjarne Stroustrup has no right of saying anything regarding language implementation and validity of users complaints.

[wsc981]

This (admittedly fake) interview with Bjarne always makes me smile: http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/Invention%5Fof%5FCplusplus.sh...

[Tloewald]

It's a shame it focuses on OO as the main problem with C++.

[CmonDev]

I think it's targeted at non-GUI developers. I'd like to see a purely functional GUI framework.

[bloodorange]

Could you substantiate your statement please.

I find that he is in a good position to do so because C++ evolved based on feedback from people using it and he was responsible for the first version(s).

[JanezStupar]

Sure.

Nowadays the consensus is that C++ introduced more problems into the industry than it solved. Moreover it keeps introducing more and more problems with each new revision.

In this light his statement is merely an attack upon his critics e.g. "Haters gonna hate..." while ignoring the possibility that criticism of "his" programming language is well founded.

Sure people bitch about every language sometimes. Hell I bitch about languages I use now and then, but I keep using them.

While systems programmers are fleeing from C++ back to C(!!!) and to newer languages like Go (for which the core design principle could be described as "Not C++").

To me his statement sound like a chronic alcoholic saying "There are only bad kids and kids you don't have."

[pjmlp]

> While systems programmers are fleeing from C++ back to C ...

Really?

GCC is now developed in C++.

Clang is developed in C++.

Mac OS X I/O Kit makes use of a C++'s subset.

Windows drivers can be done in C++ since Windows Driver Kit 8, while most new native APIs since Vista are COM based. With Microsoft only supporting enough C99 to comply with C++11/14, while helping porting FOSS C projects to Windows.

OS/400, BeOS and Symbian make use of C++ on the kernel.

Many new NoSQL databases are done in C++.

I see the C usage actually decreasing.

[Someone]

"While systems programmers are fleeing from C++ back to C(!!!)"

Example? I know of new developments in systems programming written in C++ (LLVM, clang, WebKit, FireFox (or did that start in C?)), I know of some that moved from C to C++ (gcc, maybe FireFox), I know of new developments in C (Linux, git), but I not aware of any system going from C++ to C. They may exist, but I would need more than a few examples to be convinced of the existence of a general trend.

[EpicEng]

I'm a systems guy and I love C for its simplicity. There certain problem domains which C++ is better suited for, but everything being equal, I'll chose C every time for its simplicity (don't give me the whole "shoot your foot off" argument. I know, but this is not much of an issue for experienced and competent C devs)

[frankzinger]

He didn't say anything about the validity of complaints.

[JanezStupar]

In so many words he is saying:

"People complain about my language, because they use it. If it wasn't good (enough) they would not have used it."

Thus the complaints are relegated from feedback to proof that the choices made were right thus invalidating complaints.

[frankzinger]

So by not changing X they are automatically and implicitly disagreeing with any complaints referring to X? You're reaching.

EDIT: In case my point wasn't apparent, the language is under active development by an open, international standardisation committee, of which Stroustrup is an active and prominent member. They are well aware of the complaints, but the problem is that every change involves a tradeoff, and sometimes that tradeoff is just not worth it.

[taspeotis]

> and don't get me started on Objective-C..

    itsNotTheLanguagesFaultPerSe:butIfTheFunctions:andTheirParameters:werentNamedLikeThis:itWouldBeBearable

[shaggyfrog]

I find the descriptive nature of method signatures to be quite delightful. Unlike other languages like C++, I don't always have to go looking for the function definition to see the types of the parameters it takes, and what exactly was the order again? Combined with Xcode's autocomplete, it saves a lot of time.

I shed a small tear every time I have to call a C API with and endless parade of (NULL, NULL, 0, NULL).

[nitrogen]

In C99 it's possible to use compound literals to implement something like named parameters. You create a struct with all of your parameters, and only include the ones you want to set in the compound literal. Anything not explicitly specified in the compound literal gets set to 0, so the caveat is that 0 can't be a valid value for your parameters.

[epsylon]

The book 21st century C talks about that trick:

http://books.google.fr/books?id=_EdbrocXX9MC&lpg=PA183&ots=D...

[j_s]

Switch .fr to .com: http://books.google.com/books?id=_EdbrocXX9MC&lpg=PA183&ots=...

[jasonlotito]

> I don't always have to go looking for the function definition

That's because you get it inline for you with Xcode's autocomplete. IDEs do this for other languages, and the effect is the same.

[ronaldj]

I love named arguments. I wish my programming language of choice had them.

[eonil]

You should I this code.

    langFaultFuncParamNameWBB()

[bad_user]

I have been using Scala for both server-side and Android projects. Android doesn't have such a capable VM and Scala is a little wasteful in terms of short-term objects, but using Scala while being mindful about performance implications of the code you write is still better than Java. In fact on Android you can use pretty much any language under the sun, including languages that don't run on top of the JVM. The development experience may not be as great as when using Java, sometimes you suffer from interoperability issues and so on, but for personal projects it's OK.

iOS doesn't force you to use Objective-C either. For example many top games or apps have been built in C#, by means of Unity or MonoTouch. The problem with iOS is Apple's developer agreement, as they first didn't allow apps written in anything else than Obj-C, after which they changed that to not allowing apps doing JIT compilation, but now they only enforce this rule when banning apps that download and execute code on the fly. For this reason, when embedding a WebView inside an app, Javascript will not have the same performance as Safari's Javascript engine, which is kind of stupid. So many devs prefer native compilation to avoid any problems. There's nothing wrong with iOS as a platform, what's wrong is with Apple's restrictive policies.

[RivieraKid]

> The development experience may not be as great as when using Java

Exactly. I'm pretty sure that switching to something like Scala wouldn't improve my productivity.

[bad_user]

We've got a parable in our country about a lazy bastard, that couldn't do anything out of laziness to the point of dying from hunger. One day a woman offers to help him, to give him shelter and food. To which the lazy man asks in response ... will you soak my bread? (sounds much better in Romanian)

Fuck dude. You're a developer. If you want productivity, make shit happen.

[RivieraKid]

wtf?

[James_Duval]

I think that they are saying that Scala is the proverbial bread being offered to you, and your concerns about productivity are akin to insisting that your bread be soaked so that it's easy to eat.

If that is what they're saying, I disagree with them.

[wting]

Java is a commonly used language, but not very popular according to a Hacker News poll from 2012:

https://i.imgur.com/toGKy21.jpg

In fact, it's likability percentage is worse than PHP!

I think the issue may stem from the fact that given a choice, few people use Java in their own projects but have no choice at work.

[geebee]

Unfortunately, most of these polls don't really talk about the context. I don't think I've ever been as unhappy as a developer (in terms of the tools) as when I was required to use Spring, Hibernate, Eclipse, and so forth to do web development. There was absolutely no reason we couldn't be using Rails or Django for our needs - this was a top down management situation, and I'm sure my political frustrations contributed to my unhappiness.

However, a recent coursera course on Data Structures and Algorithms used Java, and I really didn't mind it at all. I'd even say I found it reasonably pleasant to use Java.

[snambi]

when it comes to large, complex, distributed, long-living projects, java is the best choice. sure, I can build a quick prototype using python, php, node, ruby, its hard to rely on them when the project becomes large, distributed, complex etc.

IMHO its the only language that allows to create great server side programes, awesome desktop GUI applications, mobile applications or embedded applications. All in one language.

[EpicEng]

I'll agree there of course; as an ecosystem it's hard to match due to the availability of libraries and ease of platform swapping. My original comment was targeted purely at the language syntax and semantics. Like I said, there are many reasons to use Java, but I'd rather use something else given the choice

[qwerta]

> Android ... essentially force you to use Java

You can use many languages which compile down to Java Byte code.

[levosmetalo]

>> Android ... essentially force you to use Java

> You can use many languages which compile down to Java Byte code.

And then you end up with subpar performance and application size :(

I had high hopes for Mirah for Anrdoid development few years ago, but it unfortunately fade away. It was basically Ruby like language that compiled down to pure java bytecode without a need for any runtime. That would fit Android perfectly.

[qwerta]

Xtend, Haxe and Kotlin works just fine.

[pgcsmd]

FWIW: I really like Java. C and Lisp would be the other languages I'm especially fond of.

[CmonDev]

"Android and iOS essentially force you to use Java or Objective-C respectively"

But the combination of iOS and Android gently pushes you in the Mono/F#/C# direction. Come to the light side!

[EpicEng]

Hehe, I'm a systems guy, don't write much code which targets either. I try to stay up to date though.

[RivieraKid]

If Java wasn't the most used language out there, Android almost certainly made it so.

I quite like Java too, besides C#, I don't think there's any good alternative for bigger projects.

My dream would be Ceylon replacing Java some day. After looking into many newer languages aiming at a similar market as Java (Scala, Clojure, Dart, Kotlin), I believe that Ceylon is the best-designed statically typed programming language out there.

They've made incredibly good and pragmatic trade-offs between features, readability, verbosity, expressivness, speed, toolablity, familiarity, etc.

[BlarfWobble]

Android doesn't really count as java, as it doesn't use the JVM.

But even if you do choose to count it, it's only a very small part of the java ecosystem. Applets are dead, and java desktop applications unpopular, but without you necessarily seeing it, enormous amounts of server side software are made with java. If it hadn't been Java, it would have been some other language, but the fact is that there is such an enormous ecosystem of high quality libraries, tools, infrastructure and experienced programmers, architects and devops built around Java and the JVM that I don't see anything toppling it from the #1 position any time soon.

C#, being a better designed and more rapidly evolved language, might have displaced it if Windows rather than Linux had become more popular as a server OS, but it didn't, and now it won't, so that is moot.

[CodeGlitch]

I don't agree that something isn't Java if it doesn't run on Oracle's JVM. I can write Java that runs on Kaffe, etc.

Personally I really like Java - coming from a C++ developer (11 years in the games industry). I wouldn't mind working with it everyday...

[BlarfWobble]

I didn't mention the word Oracle. Kaffe is still a JVM! It runs java applications unchanged.

Dalvik is not. It can't run java classes compiled with a regular java compiler

[pjmlp]

> I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Android yet. When you add in the Android factor, Java is probably still one of the most widely used programming languages today.

Except that Oracle was right into suing Google, after all.

Google hasn't improved the language level beyond Java 6 grammar.

So nowadays one is forced to write in Java 6 when targeting Android, which is really a pain, specially when writing libraries.

This will only get worse when Java 8 gets released. No lambdas or other Java 8 goodies for Android developers.

Plus, they haven't bothered to improved GC and JIT on Dalvik past the Android 2.3 release.

They seem to care only about pushing libraries for Google APIs nowadays.

[kllrnohj]

> Google hasn't improved the language level beyond Java 6 grammar.

That's because Oracle has been suing them over it. Dalvik hasn't changed in years thanks to that lawsuit. Google was steadily improving Dalvik right up until that lawsuit happened, then it came to a screeching halt. That's not a coincidence.

And really, what Java 7 language level features were there that makes it problematic that Android still runs Java 6? The good stuff was dropped from 7 and pushed to 8. 7 is boring.

[pjmlp]

> That's because Oracle has been suing them over it. ...

Sun just did not sue them, because they lacked the money. James Gosling confirmed this.

> And really, what Java 7 language level features were there that makes it problematic that Android still runs Java 6? The good stuff was dropped from 7 and pushed to 8. 7 is boring

- Strings in switch

- Try with resources

- Multiple exceptions in catch

- Simplified IO

- Diamond type inference

- invoke dynamic optimizations

Any Java library targeted for Java 7, even without the new language features, is also not usable in Android projects, because Dex cannot understand the new Java 7 bytecodes.

Google is a corporation like any other.

[buster]

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/04/schwartz/

[pjmlp]

Two can play that game,

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57423754-94/java-creator-ja...

<quote> In his testimony last week, Schwartz explained his "grit our teeth" strategy after Android had its public debut as an incompatible variant of Sun's Java. "We saw a handset bypass our brand and licensing restrictions...we decided to grit our teeth and support it so anyone supporting it would see us as part of the value chain," he said. Apparently, continuing to seek a way to work with Google -- to turn lemons into lemonade, as Gosling wrote -- was preferable to engaging in a costly lawsuit. </quote>

[nl]

So Sun chose not to sue Google, because it would be costly (and because they knew they'd lose). They could have afforded it, but they chose not to.

History shows that was probably the right decision - As previously mentioned Google kept Android Java close to Sun Java, while now they have stopped updating it and may be considering other platforms.

BTW, you realise Gosling isn't exactly an impartial player here, right? He's always been against open sourcing Java (and open source generally: the EMACS wars probably had something to do with that), and sees what Google did as justification for his opposition. Others (including myself) see Google's actions as vindication of the Java Open Source strategy: it expanded the Java ecosystem into new fields, and made Java more important, not less.

[kllrnohj]

Simplified IO is a library feature, not a language feature, and Android has its own IO stuff anyway.

Diamond type inference is cute, but hardly important. You could do the same thing with a save macro in your IDE.

Try with resources is about the only thing in that list that would be actually useful in Android.

> Any Java library targeted for Java 7, even without the new language features, is also not usable in Android projects, because Dex cannot understand the new Java 7 bytecodes.

So target Java 6 if you're making a library. Which is what people do anyway, because not everyone has immediately jumped to 7.

And none of them will run on J2ME which Sun/Oracle never upgraded past 1.3 for Pete's sake. If not upgrading Java was worthy of a lawsuit, we should be class action'ing the hell out of Oracle for the crime against humanity that was J2ME.

BlackBerry was also 1.3 right up until the end.

Android right now is only using a version of Java that's ~1 year out of date. That's still a shitload better still than Sun ever managed to do on mobile.

> Google is a corporation like any other.

Cows go moo.

Saying irrelevant facts is fun! You're on to something here I think.

[yareally]

Actually, you can use the following on Android from Java 7 and 8:

- Case/Switch Strings

- Auto closing files handlers (via adding a few classes/interfaces). Also known as "try with resources"

- Integer literals

- Multiple exceptions in a catch block

- Lambdas via RetroLambda[2], which compiles Java 8 bytecode into 7 or 6

Used them all in several projects with 20-100k+ downloads with no user reported errors related to their usage. New Android projects though, I rather just use Scala, but older things I don't want to convert, I use the above to make Java easier to manage.

[1] https://github.com/yareally/Java7-on-Android (small guide I set up to explain how to add all the features above)

[2] https://github.com/orfjackal/retrolambda

[pjmlp]

It is not official part of Android SDK, which only supports Java 6 officially, so not possible to use in our enterprise projects.

Thanks for the tips, though.

[Zigurd]

You have cause and effect backward. Oracle created a hostile environment for developing Java as an Android language.

Secondly, Android's base classes and AIDL are a significant advance in Java.

[pjmlp]

What?!?

[eranation]

I actually wrote an essay about this few months ago, Android was indeed one of my major points: https://medium.com/i-m-h-o/da3b2c180e9c (Why Java Is Still Relevant)