[AdamSpeight2008]

Just been watching the Lang.Next 2012 talks, on Java.

They both make me feel that Java has stagnated as a programming language.


Do you agree/ disagree.

This post has been edited by AdamSpeight2008: 06 April 2012 - 04:37 PM

[nick2price]

100% disagree. Java 8 is soon to be released, which shows development continues. I also think Java is to widely used to become stagnated. If you take the Google Web Toolkit for example, that uses java to power quite a few of the Google pages. Looking at the name of the website you provided, lang.net 2012, one would assume that they are going to be bias towards .net languages. You may find that Oracle slow down on development in some areas in order to produce new technologies, but this is nothing to be worried about. For instance, over the pass few years, there has been a lot of work put into JavaEE. I still believe java is the future, maybe thats me being bias though.

Just done a search aswell, and Oracle have an estimate to release JavaEE 7 in 2013, and JavaSE 9 in 2014.

[AdamSpeight2008]

Mistyped the talk its Lang.Next 2012

This post has been edited by AdamSpeight2008: 06 April 2012 - 04:39 PM

[Ghlavac]

I wouldn't say stagnated, but I would say it needs to seriously speed up its releases because its greatly fallen behind compared to .NET

[Sergio Tapia]

Most of the new features I've seen that are coming out for Java are already implemented in other languages, and in some cases done better.

I'm glad they are actively improving the language at least, but they are moving too slowly and for that reason, I feel that the language has stagnated.

The language has too much baggage and I feel they are valuing backwards compatibility too much and not moving forward as a result.

More reading:
http://www.datamatio...avas-Future.htm

[farrell2k]

It was stagnant when Sun ran things. Now that Oracle is in command, things are going great! Java 8 in 2013, Java 9 in 2014. It looks like we'll have lambda functions and extension methods in Java 8, which is cool. Java is NOT c#. Backwards compatibility is very important, and should be.

[Martyr2]

I don't think it has stagnated but they sure are a bit more careful about what makes it into the language and that it is done right. I mean the neck break speed that C# and .NET in general is moving is crazy and a bit dangerous because they are implementing stupid syntax sugar stuff that probably handles some rare edge case that should have just been left alone.

I love C# but if they keep polluting it with a ton of features that is going to damage the language just to say "Its cool" rather than solves real world and COMMON problems.

Look at how much crap they are putting into PHP recently! Now the language is getting a bit retarded!

I find Java is much more careful and I fear if they speed up things too much they will be polluting that too. It takes time to make smart choices and put in the right constructs for a language. Most of all, it is ok to say NO to a feature even if it is implemented in another language. What is this? Language peer pressure? "Come on Java, put this in, every language is doing it".

This post has been edited by Martyr2: 06 April 2012 - 10:21 PM

[Mikhail]

Martyr2, on 07 April 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

I find Java is much more careful and I fear if they speed up things too much they will be polluting that too. It takes time to make smart choices and put in the right constructs for a language. Most of all, it is ok to say NO to a feature even if it is implemented in another language. What is this? Language peer pressure? "Come on Java, put this in, every language is doing it".

Well said Martyr2! Honestly I have to agree with that, I recently switched to Java from C# and I like it much more so far, although C# is easier to use in some instances. While Java development team might be somewhat slow it does not mean that the language has stagnated.

[jon.kiparsky]

Martyr2, on 07 April 2012 - 12:20 AM, said:

I don't think it has stagnated but they sure are a bit more careful about what makes it into the language and that it is done right.

I wasn't in the room when these decisions were made, but looking at the language it's hard to avoid the conclusion that Java was designed to be a safe language, not a cutting-edge one. Everything about the language is meant to make it possible for an organization to build and maintain stable code without requiring superstar programmers. This is why it's a popular choice for enterprise development, and it's also why it feels like a nanny state at times, but that's what all of the design decisions are about: make it difficult to build and deploy unsafe code.

I think this is a valuable thing. Programmers will know multiple languages, after all. Java doesn't need to cater to the cutting edge, and it doesn't need to be a rapid scripting language, and it really doesn't need to be a screaming-fast performance language. What it's always offered has been stability, and if that looks like stagnation, it's probably okay. It's been a good bet so far, anyway.

[Ghlavac]

farrell2k, on 06 April 2012 - 10:46 PM, said:

It was stagnant when Sun ran things. Now that Oracle is in command, things are going great! Java 8 in 2013, Java 9 in 2014. It looks like we'll have lambda functions and extension methods in Java 8, which is cool. Java is NOT c#. Backwards compatibility is very important, and should be.

8 is scheduled for 2014 actually. =/

[nick2price]

According to what I read, 8 was the end of 2012, and it was predicted that 9 would be released in 2014.

[Ghlavac]

Believe it when I see it with how long it took for 7 to come out.

[farrell2k]

Ghlavac, on 08 April 2012 - 02:10 AM, said:

Believe it when I see it with how long it took for 7 to come out.

Sun just didn't care enough. Oracle is moving quite fast.

[darek9576]

I programmed in both languages - C# and Java - and out of the two, C# is a winner. I dont like Swing in Java, it just never looks good. However, in WPF you can achieve some awesome things very easily since you can put things into other things as its very flexible. I never used databases with Java but i love Entity Framework, since its very intuitive and easy to use.

[jon.kiparsky]

Good to know. I'm sure we were all asking ourselves, "Gosh, does darek9576 prefer java or C#"? And now we know. For my part, I'm greatly relieved to have finaly settled this burning question.