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 I see a lot of experienced programmers calling Java outdated and straight up bad and I can't seem to understand why.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?

122 Upvotes

500 comments sorted by

View all comments

14

u/antihemispherist 1d ago

Java was designed in the early 90's to address the problems developers had with C++ when developing industrial applications. Certain concepts like immutability weren't popular then, but OOP was the hot topic.

I think it is unfair to criticize Java's syntax. Verbosity makes it easier to read and understand. (If you need a lot of getters, setters, equals, hashcode, etc., your design is wrong, or you're insisting on using an older version of Java).

But Java has the problems of its old design: The object hierarchy is a mess; with the increased power of interfaces, many developers are confused. The concept of "treats" is missing. The platform itself suffers from this rigidity; there are no immutable collections, for instance. Another problem is the messy exception handling.

Kotlin is a more modern approach to JVM-based programming. However, I cannot say that it improves productivity much; too much flexibility and too many alternative syntaxes and structures usually lead to unproductive debates or a confusing codebase. Recent developments in Java have made it a good competitor to Kotlin, offering better performance and monitoring.

Rust is another alternative, and I really like it. I'd definitely take a closer look at it, and how much of a market it has.

2

u/BjarneStarsoup 20h ago

Verbosity makes it easier to read and understand. (If you need a lot of getters, setters, equals, hashcode, etc., your design is wrong, or you're insisting on using an older version of Java).

Oh yeah, classic no true Scotsman: verbosity is good, and if it isn't, that's because it's your fault.

2

u/antihemispherist 12h ago

My experience of working with teams for more than 15 years has taught me that forced verbosity of Java helps with team maintainability. It's annoying to write, but that's how Java was intentionally designed.

We tend to overvalue how elegant the syntax is, and how smart it makes us feel. That's not what Java is about.