DEV Community

Discussion on: Java is too old, What should you learn in 2018?

Collapse
 
okolbay profile image
andrew • Edited

this article is such a fanboi teenage view on languages, and especially java )
besides the fact that java evolves and evolve other platforms, it actually has local variable type inference, so comparison is outdated at its best. I urge you to take a closer look at Kotlin’s origins too, which is owners of JetBrains, that claimed in one of their interviews, that they would take full advantage of owning both language and IDE to make a perfect blend - might turn out to be a biased platform.

PS and yes if you haven’t heard of Lombok for java - don’t thank me, its way much more powerful than built-in Kotlin data-class ))

Collapse
 
jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel 🕵🏻‍♂️ Fayard

it actually has local variable type inference, so comparison is outdated at its best.

That's one feature, and it's only in Java 10.
Before that is available in, let say Android, we will all be dead.

I urge you to take a closer look at Kotlin’s origins too, which is owners of JetBrains, that claimed in one of their interviews, that they would take full advantage of owning both language and IDE to make a perfect blend - might turn out to be a biased platform.

What I read from this is they have both the skills and the means to provide both a good language and good tooling support, but feel entitled to have your own opinion :)

Collapse
 
rapasoft profile image
Pavol Rajzak

Lombok is great, but the downside is that it is not part of the language. It's a separate project with it's own bugs and issues (especially compatibility) and you neef to enforce it's usage by IDE or Maven plugins (separate projects with their own issues and bugs).

Local variabled btw will be available in Java 11, which is still not releasef yet.

Collapse
 
khmarbaise profile image
Karl Heinz Marbaise

Java 11 has been released on 25. September 2018...

Thread Thread
 
rapasoft profile image
Pavol Rajzak

Ah! I thought it was scheduled for October. My bad! I bet everyone is on Java 11 by now.

Collapse
 
xgrimau profile image
Xavi

Exactly! I've been checking comparisons Java vs Kotlin for the past months and I always feel like they are comparing it to Java 6-7

Collapse
 
stealthmusic profile image
Jan Wedel • Edited

Although I find fanboy teenage view a bit harsh to say, I have to agree here.

Java is actually very mature and got lots of new features in the past years.

All the same has been said about Scala when it was released and it was hyped. I actually liked it because it had some nice features borrowed from Erlang. Nevertheless, it didn’t get mainstream as Java is.

And Lombok actually pretty handy. Have a look at my article about modern software development in Java.

So, I wouldn’t burn all the Java books yet. It’s always good to have a look at new languages, even learn those languages but I’m still skeptic about if it will at some point in time take over the role that Java has right now.