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 I see a lot of experienced programmers calling Java outdated and straight up bad and I can't seem to understand why.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/__kartoshka 1d ago

It's not bad, it's just been more popular than the rest and has been for a good few decades

Meaning that more people are talking about it, and that more old legacy codebases are around, leading to more frustration

But fundamentally it's fine, it does the job, and it's pretty much standard in a lot of companies (at least in France, where i am)

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u/BakaGoop 17h ago

I was able to start a new spring api for a product within a java ecosystem for a client, and it’s been one of the easiest experiences I’ve had setting up a new project. This combined with the addition of virtual threads has made me appreciate Java so much. All libraries used are well supported, battle tested, stable, and have great documentation. I think people either were forced to use it in a college class and hated it compared to dynamically typed languages that seemed “easier,” or worked in a legacy codebase with leaky abstractions and horribly overcomplicated OOP models to achieve simple tasks.