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Comment by bethling | Hacker News Reader

I don't know if I agree. The Java language has floundered (I've been stuck coding in it for the last couple of years), but I think the platform/JVM has started becoming used more and more often for new + exciting language options. The new release should make implementing dynamic languages on top of the JVM easiser, and could open the doors for a lot of interesting options.

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I don't think I would say it's floundered. I came back to Java last year after 10 years of C++, and was really pleasantly surprised: Programming in Java now is a nice experience. I would say it has matured, not floundered.

I think it depends on the time frame you look at. I started in Java back w/ some of the pre 1.0 releases. Between then and now, it's come a really long way.

Maybe I'm biased due to other new(er) languages becoming mainstream. But it feels like Java (as a language) has fallen behind as other Languages adopt new features that cater to different/modern techniques.

Java won't ever be cutting edge (and given the types of applications that are built with it, some stability/maturity makes a lot of sense), but look at the advances that C# has made since 1.5/1.6 has been out.

It wasn't like C++ pre C+11 -it didn't take a decade or soto catch up with the rest of the programming world, but you can see the its size slowing its advancement down.

I want to like programming in Java again (I'm not saying it's bad, or it's a mistake) - for a long time it was my go-to language for when I play with ideas. But for now it's just a way to pay the bills while I try to figure out what I want to do/make/build.

You're comparing one circle of hell to a deeper circle of hell, though.

The comparison isn't Java to C++. It's Java to C#, Scala, even Python or Ruby. And against C# and Scala in particular, Java does very poorly.

By very poorly I would guess it would depend on how your comparing them. In my experience working with Java, C#, Scala, Python and Ruby all of them were fantastic. The only time I have ever considered a language a "deeper circle of hell" was with (large team) php and perl projects.

You must be coming from a different C++ background. I had to program in Java for a couple years after 10 years of C++/Qt and was unpleasantly surprised. Java manages to be slower and more verbose/less powerful than C++.

I went from a games programming (C++) career, to Android, to enterprise Java. I admit that enterprise Java can be pretty hideous, but I think in most cases the bloat/slowness isn't caused by the language there. As far as Android is concerned, I co-wrote and optimised a skinning animation system in Java. The bottleneck ended up being things like fill-rates and GPU calculations, not Java.

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