Plan B

I agree. The whole point of using Java is that it lets diverse teams work together so that newbies can't screw pros to severely, or at least their side effects can be limited. If we lose this, we'll lose the biggest reason to use Java at all.

Posted by Mikael Gueck on February 01, 2007 at 11:33 PM IST #

I completely agree. The Java language isn't much behind C++ in complexity today. People complain about C++ idonsyncracies and now Java too has a truckload of them. The greater-than-500 page Java generics FAQ: "Why doesn't this work, why doesn't that work", says it all. Light of heaven - its a 500 page FAQ on a language feature - bigger than the language spec itself.

As a part-time C++ programmer, who has learned to accept the complexity of templates in order to reap the higher order programming model they offer, I find the Java generics implementation to be horrendously complex with the only advantage offered being that of a simplified type cast. I can accept complexity, but generics as they stand now in Java 5, completely fail the complexity budget - the cost is too high for the trivial benefit offered. Hell, even Ken Arnold agrees.

I consider autoboxing (the way its implemented) as a mistake - see the HUGE Javalobby discussion on this code snippet which fails the expected behaviour:

Integer a = 10, b = 10 ;
Integer c = 129, d = 129 ;
System.out.println( a == 10 ) ; // A
System.out.println( a == b ) ; // B
System.out.println( c == 129 ) ; // C
System.out.println( c == d ) ; // D
 > true
> true
> true
> false

Yes, you can complain to the effect that the == is not meant to be used that way..you must use the .equals method...try and explain that to a newbie programmer..and then tell him its ok when the objects are Enums.

2007-08 will be the year the "Java Gotchers", "Java Pitfalls" and other books of that genre will begin to get released - The language will inevitably get the label of being extremely complex and that will spell the beginning of the drop in the language adoption rate . Its kind of ironic really ... Stroustrup himself predicted that this would be the case early in 2000.

I think the runtime is here to stay for a very long time though. I think much of future development will move away from Java and instead use languages that target the JVM.

Posted by Tarun Elankath on February 02, 2007 at 05:42 PM IST #

doubled := (anInteger < 1) ifTrue: [1] ifFalse: [anInteger * 2].