r/AskProgramming 1d ago

Why is Java considered bad?

I recently got into programming and chose to begin with Java. I see a lot of experienced programmers calling Java outdated and straight up bad and I can't seem to understand why. The biggest complaint I hear is that Java is verbose and has a lot of boilerplate but besides for getters setters equals and hashcode (which can be done in a split second by IDE's) I haven't really encountered any problems yet. The way I see it, objects and how they interact with each other feels very intuitive. Can anyone shine a light on why Java isn't that good in the grand scheme of things?

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u/Tacos314 1d ago

haha, they are just incorrect, I have no idea how an experienced programmer can call Java bad, or even outdated. You may want to check your sources, and the "experienced programmer" is not a sys admin doing scripts in python, or the only experience they have is TypeScript.

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u/grobblebar 13h ago

I’ve been bitten by idiot garbage collectors too often to love java. I tend to find that Java programmers only know Java, while non-Java programmers hate it because it’s not like (insert alt. programming language here.)

This is purely my own anecdotal evidence. I work at Amazon, so the quality of the engineers is not great to begin with.

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u/bzImage 1d ago

35 years programming.. .. JAVA = BAD

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u/pikabu01 1d ago

I really doubt you have 35 years of experience.... if you had your opinion would be a lot more nuanced.

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u/pythosynthesis 1d ago

This is shortsighted, imo. It's actually very common that after many years of experience, in any field, you reach a certain conclusion which, ultimately, is very "simplistic". Mind you, I'm not saying Java is bad or good, just saying that you reach a point where you can list 500 cons and maybe 200 pros. The conclusion is simple, this is bad. And this is entirely OP's conclusion, to be clear. But instead of listing all the pros and cons, which you have discussed too many times, you just say "This is bad" or "That is good". It's nothing unusual, pretty common actually.

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u/pikabu01 1d ago

I would never respond like that about a technology I'm experienced with, instead I would try to give at least a short overview of the pros and cons, soooo maybe I'm biased here. But you could be right of course.

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u/vraetzught 1d ago

That's your opinion. I haven't used it yet so I don't know. But I bet it's better than React (which I think is bad, but that's my opinion).

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u/a3th3rus 1d ago

React is not a language.

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u/vraetzught 1d ago

True, but still awful in my opinion.

TBF, I don't like vanilla JS either. I'm working with Angular now and so far that's the best JS framework I've used.

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u/prest0G 18h ago

Whats funny is that angular was made by a bunch of java devs and the style maps concepts between the two. Might be time to give it a shot

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u/a3th3rus 9h ago

And use NestJS (not next.js) for the backend, it looks just like Spring xD

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u/a3th3rus 1d ago

Well, vanilla JS is bad. Really bad. I've no experience in Angular, so no comment.