Java > Scala

[Nick Sabalausky]

(Weird - my reply seems to have never appeared. Sorry if this is a dup...)

From: "Caligo" <iteronvexor at gmail.com>
>
> Java is a joke.  Get over it.  Java is a toy language and the only reason
> people and companies have taken it seriously is because so many kids have
> have decided (brainwashed) to play with it.  With enough marketing and
> propaganda you can make people believe whatever you want them to believe.
> Java is also the "blue collar" programming languages, which means
> corporations get to exploit people all around the world in order to make
> even more profits.
>

I like your bluntness :)  And I'd tend to agree: Java has always been
basically an OO VisualBasic sans MS (But nobody's been allowed to actually
say so because it's been popular.) And of course VisualBasic itself has
always been the 90's version of Cobol (although VB has at least had some
value as a learning language; I'm not so sure the same could be said of
Cobol, although I wouldn't know).

> So far I have competed in the ACM ICPC regional programming contests
> twice.  I've met many students there and I've had many teammates, most if
> not all of them Java programmers.  Besides me (I've never actually done
> any
> Java), I don't know any other C++ programmer in there.  I have seen
> countless problems solved in Java and C++, with Java always being 10-20
> times slower: same problem, same algorithms and/or data structures.
> Whenever I find an article that talks about Java being faster than C++, I
> know it's BS.  You can find fair comparisons at http://www.spoj.pl/
>
> Java is also very sluggish.  I don't exactly know why, but I'm sure it has
> something to do with JVM and/or GC.  Just look at Android and compare it
> to
> iPhone to see what I mean.  Apps running on the PC written in Java are
> also
> sluggish: Things like Eclipse and Open Office come to mind.
>
> Java is a joke.  It's a faith-based ideology.  Get over it.
>

While I admit it's anecdotal, this has always been my experience with Java,
too. Java did help show me some of the downsides of C++ (ex, headers never
bothered me until I looked at Java), but that's pretty much been the extent
of my appreciation for Java.