Sick of Java

Question

This is a rant that is bordering on belonging in Off Topic. In fact, it's almost worthy of a blog. But I hate blogs (I didn't write the 'Why I Fucking Hate Web Blogs' article, but I would have if it hadn't been done).
This topic is inspired by:
http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2005/07/14/sleep.html
WTF is the use of a Perl-like scripting language for Java. IMNSHO, People that still code Perl should be eligible for early retirement. Sure it was a wonderful language, totally dynamic, don't have to declare anything pretty much brand new concept when it originally came out. It was revolutionary.
But we've got Python, Ruby, and PHP now, not to mention 50 million other scripting languages that only a few people (their original developers, I think) use. Perl was a great idea, but the new languages, while based on Perl, are much easier to read and write. They're better languages.
Ok, Java. I'm really pissed off right now about the number of scripting languages available for Java. I can't even list them all... Jython, Groovy, Beanshell, Javascript, Jacl, Sleep, Nice... to name but a few. I think there's even a JRuby interpreter now. Sure having more options is a great thing, but who really wants to context switch between scripting language designs every time they need to write a script for Java.
Originally, I thought that Sun was going to try to standardize on one language. I'd heard rumors that it would be Groovy or Beanshell. Both of these languages have JSR's standardizing them. But then they turn around and put javascript in the new JRE.
Now, a short aside ranting on XML. Java and XML are married with children. Its virtually impossible to work on a Java app without coding some XML. All the frameworks love XML. Ant is XML. Maven is XML. TestNG is XML. XML XML XML. Bah. XML is ugly and a waste of bytes. In my personal project's I've attempted to avoid XML as much as possible, but this SEVERELY restricts me in my choice of Java libraries. There must be something wrong with me as a Java developer. All the others seem to think XML is a good thing.
Back to Java. The JRE is too big. Rather than choosing what is best, Sun seems to have decided to throw every single option into the runtime environment in hopes that it will attract developers that will use one or the other of those options. (I haven't yet installed java.lang.KitchenSink, but I hear its coming)
Back to those pesky scripting languages. Why does Java need a scripting language? Because its too big and bulky to be used for these simple tasks by itself. Nobody would ever dream of writing a scripting language for Python! We don't even need a data definition language (like *drumroll* XML) for Python. We can just code it in Python itself.
But scripting languages are powerful. Why does Java need a scripting language is a stupid question. A good question, with an obvious answer, is why do scripting languages need Java?
Ok, what about package distribution? Some of you probably know about my efforts to standardize Java package distribution on Arch Linux. It's horrible; every major program has to include copies of the external libraries that it needs.  There's nothing remotely resembling dynamic linking. THis problem is being lessened by the fact that a lot of external libraries are getting folded back into the JRE. Which, of course, exacerbates the other problem -- the size of the JRE. Its a pretty big download, isn't it? Not really worth it if you just run one or two Java apps.
I am a Java programmer. I have been for quite some time. I'm quite good at it. I enjoy it... or at least, used to enjoy it.
I think the problem here is that I like Arch Linux. Arch users like a KISS philosophy. I've tried to apply this philosophy to Java programming. I've managed it with a fair amount of success, but it seems no other Java developers like to keep things simple. So in trying to keep my Java programs simple (read: elegant), I have to fight the language, the interface, third party libraries, and documentation. Its possible, but I'm tired of fighting it.
Finally, I'm not saying there's anything wrong with people who use Java. They seem to like it. It seems to be good for enterprise work. Its just wrong for me. I guess Java is to programming languages as Red Hat is to Linux Distributions.
I didn't really have a purpose in this rant. It just saddens me that I feel this way about something I've loved for a long time. I find it depressing to know that very few people here will disagree with me (perhaps soniX, arooaroo... Mr. Green).
Dusty

Answer 1

Dusty wrote:Now, a short aside ranting on XML. Java and XML are married with children. Its virtually impossible to work on a Java app without coding some XML. All the frameworks love XML. Ant is XML. Maven is XML. TestNG is XML. XML XML XML. Bah. XML is ugly and a waste of bytes. In my personal project's I've attempted to avoid XML as much as possible, but this SEVERELY restricts me in my choice of Java libraries. There must be something wrong with me as a Java developer. All the others seem to think XML is a good thing.
I don't understand XML configurations either... I remember when XML was new, I had been working on a message transfer system from VMS flat files and PLCs all the way up to an Oracle DB on a unix box... there was no real good way to pass messages because some parts were "user entered data" - so what I did was to format the data seperated with carets (^) because it's distinct enough, and escape carets from the message...
you would get data like this:
1234^XXIFIDD^Y^N^1000^Some data^More data
Now that's fine and dandy, and at the time of XML's birth, was the best thing to do vs specifically defined length (i.e. chars 1-10 are the ID, 11-14 are this, 15-16 is that).  The problem is that on the recieving end, you need to have rules defined for each message type in order to parse/validate it properly before jamming it in the DB... the message that sent the data above needed to know that the 1st and 5th tokens were numeric and the 3rd and 4th were boolean.  Yeah, you can add meta data in there, but it would start making things more and more messy...
XML would solve this issue very easilly, as far as the meta data and delimiting goes (simplified version):
<int>1234</int><str>XXIFIDD</str><bool>Y</bool>...etc...
doing it this way also allowed for an easy mechanism to send multiple rows in one message:
<row><int>1234</int><str>XXIFIDD</str><bool>Y</bool>...etc...</row>
<row><int>1235</int><str>XXIFIDD</str><bool>Y</bool>...etc...</row>
Sure all this can be done other ways, but the standardization and uniformity gained through XML message passing is great...