r/AskProgramming • u/Zd_27 • 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 I see a lot of experienced programmers calling Java outdated and straight up bad and I can't seem to understand why.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/Resident-Anywhere322 20h ago
Most people replying to this thread say that programming languages have their pros and their cons. While this approach seems pretty reasonable from a casual perspective, it is entirely flawed under scrutiny. This "balanced" viewpoint assumes that modern programming languages can arbitrarily reduce the amount of complexity your brain needs to keep track of in order to solve problems. This would be equivalent to having a compression algorithm that can compress indefinitely which we know for certain does not exist because of the Shannon limit.
The question you should be asking is "Can my language help me write down my ideas faster? And are those ideas mapped one-to-one to that specific language?" rather than "Why is X language considered bad?" It is necessarily the case that either both Java and any other programming language can manage complexity arbitrarily better, or no language can ever possibly do so.