Hacker News Reader

Hacker News

Comment by RivieraKid | Hacker News Reader

Full thread

RivieraKid

Unfortuntely, I don't see good alternatives for Java if it's a larger project.

C# - tied to MS stack. I know, there's Mono, but I'm somehow sceptical using it for a web app...

Python, Ruby, PHP - slow, much worse IDE support than Java.

Clojure - dynamic typing -> worse IDE support, less readable than Java.

Scala - slow compilation, overly complex and unelegant syntax.

Go - looks good, but sometimes feels too low-level - it's a systems programming language, it was created as a C++ replacement.

Dart - unfortunately the ecosystem isn't evolved yet, but this is how Java should look like. The only thing I don't like is optional typing.

View on HN

If you hadn't identified yourself as a Java programmer, it would have been obvious by your high level of concern for IDEs.

Language like Python and Ruby don't have IDE support like Java does because they don't need them. I'm reminded of the post, "IDEs are a Language Smell": http://www.recursivity.com/blog/2012/10/28/ides-are-a-langua...

It's sometimes a bit disconcerting how strong a learned dependence Java programmers seem to have with IDEs.

>C# is tied to MS stack. I know, there's Mono, but I'm somehow sceptical using it for a web app...

I don't understand why the initial reaction to Mono is always skepticism. No one's first reaction to other open-source projects is instant skepticism...

It's possible that people commonly conflate their feelings towards Mono with their feelings about the general CLR/C# environment.

Not saying that's definitely the case here, but how many web-targeted projects exist for .NET/Mono? Obviously, there's ASP/MVC - but what else? Compared to the number of web frameworks/etc for Java? (I don't know.)

The anti-Microsoft sentiment seems strong among web devs. So, when new devs start out, they might read a lot about how if it comes from Microsoft - it can't be good. I am fairly certain that that is a strongly contributing factor to people's avoidance of it.

In regards to Go, why do you think it feels too low-level? Is it about library availability or is it more about the language itself?

From what I can remember (not all of these are about being too low level):

* Pointers, dereference, pass by value vs pass by reference

* Creating maps with "make" is weird, in Java I would just call a constructor

* I'm not a big fan of the type system, it somehow doesn't feel robust and full-featured. Making Go good for OOP definitely wasn't a priority.

Have you ever seen PyCharm http://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/? I do feel it is a much better solution than what Eclipse has to offer.

No, but I'd be very surprised if it was better than Eclipse & Java, because Python is dynamically typed and generally less explicit (Java has access modifiers, standard annotations like @Override etc.).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com