- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Seems like an interesting effort. A developer is building an alternative Java-based backend to Lemmy’s Rust-based one, with the goal of building in a handful of different features. The dev is looking at using this compatibility to migrate their instance over to the new platform, while allowing the community to use their apps of choice.
You must log in or register to comment.
Too bad it’s java
I see you woke up and chose violence.
I just self host and avoid Java like the plague due to how annoying it is to manage
What’s annoying about it? Deploying a
warto tomcat is one of the easiest things one can do.If you are a Java shop, and you do tomcat, then cool, maybe you’ve worked out the mysteries if Java deployment and managing resources (ahem, memory), and upgrades etc over the life cycle of a project. But most people doing deployment don’t want a one off Java app as a snowflake in their intra, if they can help it because it requires more buy into the ecosystem than you want
3 billion devices can’t be wrong…
Browsing the code makes me angry at how bloated Java projects are:
package com.sublinks.sublinksapi.community.repositories; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.community.dto.Community; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.community.models.CommunitySearchCriteria; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.post.dto.Post; import com.sublinks.sublinksapi.post.models.PostSearchCriteria; import org.springframework.data.domain.Page; import org.springframework.data.domain.Pageable; import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.JpaRepository; import org.springframework.data.jpa.repository.Query; import org.springframework.data.repository.query.Param; import java.util.List; public interface CommunitySearchRepository { List<Community> allCommunitiesBySearchCriteria(CommunitySearchCriteria communitySearchCriteria); }Every file is 8 directories deep, has 20 imports, and one SQL statement embedded in a string literal. 😭
Yup. Welcome to the world of Java where such things are not only silly but encouraged.
Most IDEs will handle the imports for you and auto collapse them
Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it better
How would you do “better” imports then?
*Vaguely wave arms towards the few dozens languages that do imports right*
I don’t mind Java personally, but let’s not pretend that its import syntax and semantics is at the better side of the spectrum here.
Just look at… Go, Haskell, TypeScript, Rust, even D has a better module system.
Isn’t Go just the requivalent of only doing asterisk-imports in Java, just without (and fair enough, Java has 0 need to do that 😂) repeating the
import-keyword?There are multiple things in Go that make it better.
But just for giving a few thoughts about Java itself;
- being able to import a package and use it as a namespace would already go a long way
- being able to import multiple things from a package without listing separate line for each items
- not having to go from the root of the whole fucking world to import a package would be great
- having the ability to do relative imports to the module I’m writing would be great
These are like “module 101” things. Like, you’re right that the IDEs nowadays do most of that, but IDEs also get it wrong (“oh you meant a THAT package instead of that other one”) and reading the code without an IDE is still a thing (code reviews for example) which means the longer the import section (both vertically and horizontally) the harder it is to work with. And if you don’t look at all imports carefully you may miss a bug or a vulnerability.
Also, Java is the only language I know of that has such a span on the horizontal. The memes about needing a widescreen monitor for Java is actually not a joke; I never had to scroll horizontally in any other language. To me that’s just insanity.
Also, if you’re gonna make it the whole universe as the root of your package structure, we already have DNS and URI/URLs for that. Let me use that!
And don’t get me started as only-files-as-packages while simultaneously having maybe-you-have-multiple-root for your code… makes discovery of related files to the one you’re working with very hard. Then of course the over reliance on generated code generating imports that might or might not exist yet because you just cloned your project…
And what’s bad about that? As in, how is the verbosity a negative thing exactly? More so because virtually any tool can be configured to default-collapse these things if for your specific workflow you don’t require the information.
At the same time, since everything is verbose, you can get very explicit information if you need it.
Here’s an example:
IMO that’s a lot of code (and a whole dedicated file) just to (magically) hook a global event and increase the subscriber count when a link object is added.
The worst part is that it’s all copy/pasted into a neighbouring file which does the reverse:
It’s not the end of the world or anything, I just think good code should surprise you with its simplicity. This surprises me with its complexity.
how is the verbosity a negative thing exactly
Fun fact, studies have found that the number of bugs in a program is proportional to the number of lines of codes, across languages. More lines of codes, more bugs, even for the same math and edge cases. So a more verbose language tends to have more bugs.
Interesting, but did this include web code and code only one person really ever works on?
Because on the pure backend level, I have observed the reverse over my career. The shorter, the “smarter”, the “cooler” the code, the more buggy it is. Not based on the code itself, but based on the developer inevitably leaving the company at some point. Meaning that what matters all of is a sudden is how verbose, how documented and how explicit the code is, because the bugs come from someone else messing with it as they get to take it over. It’s a legacy problem in a lot of ways.
Hence me saying that if solo projects are included, they probably tilt this massively as they’ll never really run into this problem. Like say, you just scan github or something. Of course most projects in there are solo, of course the more lines the more room for bugs.
But in an environment where you’re not solo coding, the issue is not getting the code to run and having it have no programmed bugs, but to be able to have someone else understand what you did and wanted to do in a meaningful amount of time, especially as they have to mutate your code over years and decades. Or maybe it’s just that the bugs no longer are what “matters”, as fixing code bugs is cheap compared to the endless hours wasted from “clever” code being unmaintainable. 🤷I have a similar experience, in that anytime I heard someone hating on the verbosity of Java it was never the good devs the ones who can write a code that’s readable a few months later.
Its still better than any python project lol
Really? I find python imports to work very similar to cpp in practice.
But you really dont see what the function wants or requires or returns ( except with typehints, but they dont work most of the time and then its not enforced in any way )
Larger, modern python projects always use type hints, for this specific reason.
In the past you had PyDoc, which also scratched that itch.
Barring that, contributing to a python project is very difficult without an IDE that performs type checks for you (which is unreliable).
Correct! As i already contributing to a big ass python project at work. We will rewrite a Big Project from python to c# in under 1 month.
Just you wait until your developers learn about the
varkeyword - it’s going to be Python 2.7 PTSD incidents all over again 😂
Who cares? If it works, it works.
The biggest strength of Java is that many programmers has years or even decades of experience in it.
i know right! same thing with PHP! many progs decades experience hahaha
PHP has been having a resurgence in popularity because it works.
PHP never went away. Wordpress, Mediawiki, Slack, Facebook, etc etc etc. IMO PHP is likely to have created the most wealth per line of code of all languages, including C (edit: since 2000). It’s completely under the radar.
Same thing with COBOL! So many devs with … Wait. Are any COBOL devs even alive still?
Same thing with COBOL! So many devs with … Wait. Are any COBOL devs even alive still?
I promise you one thing, those that are still alive are making bank right now.
Usually at banks, where they easily earn 2x+ of what I do working in Java. I happen to know one IRL, and their meetings with the boss are funny because it doesn’t really matter what number they put on the table, their boss cannot fire them. They could not replace them and they need 2+ COBOL devs in house.
I happen to know one IRL, and their meetings with the boss are funny because it doesn’t really matter what number they put on the table, their boss cannot fire them. They could not replace them and they need 2+ COBOL devs in house.
I can concur, I’ve seen the same thing in real life myself. Definitely a blast watching the employee have the power.
I care, as someone who self hosts and have been doing so for 22 years. Java has always been the most annoying thing to maintain as a holster, especially on low resourced machines, like my raspi
Java is for enterprise level software that’s robust not for self hosting on a pi
You self host lemmy.world?
No, why does that matter?
Also you don’t have to worry about memory management
You don’t with Rust either.
Lol how about one written in NodeJS? 😆
Brainfuck would be my choice if we are making things harder for ourselves.
I bet there are forks already. NodeJS is quite popular really.
I love Java.
As someone who used to be a Java programmer, I can’t make any sense of that statement.
Java is the first language I learned. I love how structured it is and how it forces you to work within the paradigm. I might never use it again, but it shaped how I think of programming.
That’s why I like Java too. The fact that it’s so strict means I have to think about projects in a certain way and can’t just wing my way through it like Python.
Right. And then you’ll write better code when you do use Python or JavaScript or whatever.
As someone who mostly uses C++ and C# Java is much easier for most projects
There’s nothing wrong with java
Oh yes there is
Competition is good. We need to take the web back
There used to be hookers, and blackjack. In fact just bring back the 80’s
Wot
Back then BBS wasn’t an acronym for what you think it was.
I have a hard time believing that rewriting the backend from scratch would be faster than getting PRs approved on the main project.
Forks like this with one guy who “knows best” usually die a slow quiet death as they get left behind by the main project.
I think how quickly this project has gotten to near feature parity is a testament to how slow Lemmy development has been. Think about scaled sort (a feature that has been hotly requested since the migration) and how long that took to get merged in. A sort should not by any means be slow to implement.
deleted by creator
IMO slow development isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Sure but even just recently there was the example of breaking federation over Christmas. Some of those issues persist through 0.19.3 which came out today
Similarly scaled sort would have made a huge difference for small communities in the period directly after the migration.
deleted by creator
IMO slow development isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Quite the opposite, often it’s a benefit as you don’t end up wasting time and changing code for features where you don’t actually know yet whether your current usage demands or supports them. There’s a lot of genefit in not moving fast and not breaking things. Mostly that, well, you don’t constantly break things.
A sort should not by any means be slow to implement.
Sure, if the sort key is something readily available. But for scaled sort they have to compute relative size/activity of the communities the specific user is in. The cost isn’t the sort, it’s computing the metric.
I’m not talking about the literal sorting algorithm. Pretty sure scaled sort is exactly one more operation than hot.
deleted by creator
I’m a Java developer and I would much rather pick up Rust to join an active project than try to rebuild something that already works using a less-marketable language.
Sure, but it’s a lot more work for you to get to a point where you can be an active contributor.
Is it really a lot of work for an experienced dev? I can pick up most new languages in a day or 2 unless it’s a total paradigm shift.
1-2 days is enough to learn the basics, but I doubt you’ll be as nearly as productive as with something you’ve been using for years. Keep in mind that new languages also mean new frameworks, etc, some which take years to actually master, but at least months to get a good handle on them.
Also, from my understanding, Rust is a bit of a paradigm shift.
Sure, anyone can pick up a new language or two over a weekend. That doesn’t mean they are confident enough to contribute to large scale programs with it. That takes much longer to learn.
Yeah I agree. Rust is an excellent language when you absolutely must be as safe as possible but don’t want garbage collection. But there is a level of precision required of developers which makes it slower to development in. Other languages like Java, Python and Go are all quicker to develop in. Java is much easier to refactor IMO
Depends on amount of technical debt really. Sometimes rewrite is the only way. But in general fixing things can be done. It’s just matter of time, focus and effort.
What missing features are so important that you decide to recreate the entire backend of Lemmy because you think the devs aren’t fast enough?
Java instead of Rust is going to be a big thing for a lot of people who would like to contribute in their spare time. Yeah, Rust is cool, but every CS grad and their mother knows Java.
Back during the migration surge a few months ago, you commonly saw a LOT of comments from folks saying they would love to help eat away at the project’s backlog, but they just didn’t have the time or energy to learn Rust at the moment.
Any recent CS grad is obsessed with rust, trust me. It’s not hard to learn either with that background.
I’m not saying that rewriting he backend is a good choice, but for me specifically, I’d like Lemmy to be written in Java. Why? I’m a Java software engineer for nearly 7 years now and I’d like to contribute. Yes, I could learn Rust, like I did learn Go, C, C++ and other languages during my cs studies. But I really don’t have the free time and motivation to do that after I already worked 8-10 hours at my computer. If I could use my existing Java knowledge to quickly fix some small bugs or whatever, I’d love to do that. But the hurdle to learn a new language (including other paradigms and best practices) just to contribute to this one project is just too high for me.
Exactly this. It’s often about finding the right balance between technically optimal, and socially feasible (lacking the right phrase here).
The nerds brimming with technical expertise often neglect the second point.
Oh - wow! I was about to complain about how https://join-lemmy.org/ is a shining bad example in this regard, talking about server stuff right away and hiding how Lemmy actually looks until page 3, but apparently they changed that and improved it drastically. Cool, good job!
Anyways.
For collaborative projects especially, it is important to strike a balance between tech and social aspects. Making poor tech choices will put people off. But making your project less accessible will also result in less people joining. It’s crucial to find a good balance here. For many coming from the tech side, this usually means making far more concessions to the social side than intuitively feels right.
Once you know a few languages and the principles for how a computer works moving to a new one is easy. Don’t think of it as being a “Java developer”, but a programmer. It’s just a tool.
We did not learn languages at uni, but concepts. You use the same data structures and algorithms.
I think you’d be surprised, try picking up rust for some advent of code challenges. If you know Java Streams and C/C++ lower level programming all that you’re missing is some pattern matching.
Anyone can quickly learn how to solve some code challenges in a new language.
It’s a completely different story to learn how to write long lived enterprise scale programs that can grow with multiple independent contributors. This takes a lifetime to learn. More people have more experience to do it with Java.
If I were to guess, it’s not recent grads making those posts. I got the sense those comments were coming from people who had been around for a while. Folks who are now senior enough to be trapped in draining meetings all day, and have to manage a family a night.
The work day and home life can get longer and more exhausting the further the older you get.
That feeling when you’re not a recent CS grad anymore 😭
I never even heard of rust when I graduated in 2016.
Yeah, Rust is cool, but every CS grad and their mother knows Java.
Sure, twenty-five years ago, when Sun was pushing their language hard into colleges everywhere.
Now? Sun Microsystems doesn’t even exist, and everybody hates the JVM in an ecosystem where VMWare, Docker, and Kubernetes do the whole “virtual machine” model much better.
Can’t say I agree. It feels like an almost even 50/50 split between Java and C# when I look at job postings.
Now? Sun Microsystems doesn’t even exist
That was a long, long, long time ago.
Java has continued to be very popular after Oracle purchased Sun Microsystems.
I think rust is a very pragmatic choice, lemmy is decentralized, the security benefits are a necessity when it comes to self hosters donating hardware
Java is also memory safe
After working in java for over a decade, I will never use another garbage-collected language if I can avoid it again. I still have nightmares about debugging memory build-ups and having to trace down where to do manual garbage collection. I remember my shop eventually just paid for 32 GB ram servers, and java filled those up too.
Rust doesn’t have these problems because its not a garbage collected language like java or go, and has an ownership-based memory model that’s easy to work with.
Is that still a problem in newer java versions? I have to admit I have only written simple things in java.
Garbage collection is by nature imperfect, its impossible for it to always be correct about when and what things to free up in memory. The best option is to not use a garbage collected language.
Wow. It’s amazing that anyone ever got anything to work in java. Must have never got used for anything
Ah yes, that explains the log4j fiasco
That wasn’t a memory safety issue, that was a what the fuck were you thinking design issue. It would have been batshit in any language
Yeah, Rust is cool, but every CS grad and their mother knows Java.
This is quite an outdated view I would say.
Lemmy doesn’t have to have missing features for someone to want to write their own implementation. And in a decentralized system you want multiple implementations to exist. This is a good thing
Trust and Safety tooling, apparently.
Good mod tools
This looks like the major driver of the project, IMO. The Sublinks roadmap is full of feature ideas geared toward better moderation, both at the community and instance level.
Why Java though ? Like really ? It’s… Better than any other compiled language ?
Because modern Java is an OK language with a great ecosystem to quickly build web backends. And there are lots of java devs which means more potential contributors.
Exactly. It’s also using Spring Boot, Hibernate, and Lombok. It looks just like projects at work. It might be the first fediverse project I contribute regularly to.
+1 same
I tried to contribute to Lemmy, spent a few hours really confused by rust and gave up. I can meaningfully contribute to a Java/Spring project, not a rust one.
Spring Boot, Hibernate, and Lombok
Ah, yes. How about he kitchen sink and another 5000 dependencies to make Java bareable to code in? Actually lets skip Java cos it’s an over-engineered cluster-fuck that considers verbosity a virtue.
If you don’t want to contribute, don’t. Do you think being a hater is helpful?
It sooooooooothes my soul. 🙂
Hello world in Java = 500 lines of code.
Hello world in Rust = 3 lines of code.
Java is over-engineered corporate bullshit used by banks and Android development. Nobody programs Java for the fun of it.
BS
Java devs are the reason humanity will never have FTL drives.
Oh right, that’s a much less moronic take. Well done genius
Hello World is < 10 lines in Java. Just say you don’t know the language and go away.
Java runs the majority of corporate software out there, and it is very good at what it’s built for.
I’ll take Java over Python/Rust any day of the week
It’s probably got the best library/tooling ecosystem of any language out there. Certainly dwarfs Rust in that regard. Easier to find devs. Reasonably efficient thou not as much as Rust and typically less memory efficient. It’s a perfectly good suggestion for a project like Lemmy. I’d reach for Java or Go before Rust for a project like this but you know, that’s just me.
You see, Go would’ve been a better option than Java.
It would have been a good option. As is Java. If you want to do it in Go, go ahead.
Probably because everyone knows it and its more predictable
Predictable in what sense?
If you say the function should only recieve one argument and returns always boolean. It is predictable to only allow the wanted args and forces you to return a boolean.
For example in a less predictable programming language e.g. Python: I can do all above but python does not stop anyone to put more or less arguments to a function, or a developer not adding typehints or not complying to them and return a string instead of a boolean.
But i had it wrong rust is similar to java on that part.
But still it is a lot more popular and easier to start with. So there will be a lot more contributor to sublinks than lemmy ever had.
Well in that sense Rust is even more predictable than Java. In Java you can always get back exception that bubbled up the stack. Rust function would in that case return Result that you need to handle somehow before getting the value.
That i dont understand? How can it be a result that i need to handle? If its not correct than java will throw an error. ( As expected, shit in shit out )
It’s a great and probably the best error system I’ve seen, instead of just throwing errors and having bulky try catch statements and such there’s just a result type.
Say you have a function that returns a boolean in which something could error, the function would return a Result<bool, Error> and that’s it. Calling the function you can choose to do anything you want with that possible Error, including ignoring it or logging or anything you could want.
It’s extremely simple.
If I except a boolean, there is an error and get a Result, is Result an object? How do I know if I get a bool or error?
deleted by creator
Made me think of this.
What’s MApalmtreebicepAB
for a moment I thought you were talking about 🤣-lang
MApalmarmAB?
MATLAB
Lmao at people not being able to read that.
Java backend? What year is it?
2024, Java is still the 2nd language on GitHub with 11,7% of the total code hosted, while Rust is number 13 with 1,8%
Java has been around for decades longer than Rust, comparing total code numbers doesn’t tell the whole story
That’s not the whole story, most of the Java code that exists is proprietary, java is undoubtedly #1
Oh definitely, but I took GitHub as it should reflect “hobby projects”
You actually think there’s more Java code than JavaScript?
obviously I wasn’t counting JS because by sheer volume, HTML+CSS+JS will outnumber everything because it’s the only combo for the browser.
but if you restrict it as JS for Backend, then obviously it’s not even close to Java.
If you can write off JS because “you have to use it because it’s the internet” then I can write off Java because “you have to use it for billions of 20 year old legacy applications”.
I am not writing it off, I am saying it has no competition in the browser… therefore irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
and btw, even in the link https://madnight.github.io/githut/#/pull_requests/2023/4 Javascript is not first, Python is, over Java.
but once again, you would actually have to look for the backed JS applications, you are not choosing java over JS for the web, at best you would choose JSF and that still uses javascript.
Js is not a real language and can’t hurt you
Is Big Coffee paying you to shill Java all over this post?
If only… More seriously, I want Lemmy/Kbin/Sublinks to succeed, and the development rhythm of Lemmy made me perplex for a while.
A new option with a more popular language could address this.
Check the back of every dollar for an Oracle database support contract, that’s how they get you!
Every year since Java existed
A year in which the number of Java developers and ecosystem dwarfs that of Rust.
Java is still a strong language.
I think the people who say this and think Rust is the second coming of Jesus, just don’t code. You choose the right language that’s needed for the job. Server stuff like this is Java’s bread and butter. As amazing as Rust is, it has proven to not be a great choice for Lemmy’s development.
I’m curious why you say Rust “ has proven “ to not be a great choice. There is a lack of Rust programmers, but its been the fastest growing community on GitHub for multiple years now, and has proven to be viable at all level of the stack.
Full disclaimer: I code and work in Rust daily on the backend and frontend.
Full disclaimer: I code and work in Rust daily on the backend and frontend.
Would you and your colleagues be interested in contributing to Lemmy’s codebase? I’m genuinely asking, I’m still surprised by the low number of contributors for a project that has 40k active monthly users
I barely have time to contribute to fix bugs in the dependencies I use. If I had more time for OSS contributions I might, but I’m not in my 20s anymore and when I’m not at work I’m taking care of my family.
My colleagues and friends are free to do as they please.
I guess that’s the same for most of the userbase. Which is probably why switching to a more spread language could increase the number of contributors.
Not to mention a lot of massive companies also use it at every part of the stack, Rust is good at it all and it is beautifully and perfectly suited for tasks like these.
It certainly sounds more likely that you “just don’t code”.
God damn you are fucking annoying
a missed opportunity to name it Jemmy
I’m just here for the joke
EDIT: sentence structure
Based on all the other threads and cross posts it just seems like this software is being created because Jason Grim doesn’t like the lemmy devs or their politics. I guess that’s as good of a reason to fork as any. I’m happy with the way lemmy is and how its being created so I have been doing monthly donations to them for its development.
It’s not a fork though. It’s a complete rewrite in another programming language. That’s way more effort than a petty project.
The truth is, this might succeed based on developer reach. I love Rust, but I know it won’t have the reach (yet) that Java can, and more developers mean faster progress.
In the end, between this, Lemmy or another project which may be a fork of either, the success will be due to efforts of everyone involve at every stage. This wouldn’t exist without Lemmy, and Lemmy wouldn’t exist with ActivityPub.
I’m not sure I believe “faster” progress really means anything when two communists are creating a hobby software that isn’t really for business or necessarily targeting growth at all costs.
This is not hobby software, this is public good software. They are paid in large part by grants
Removed by mod
I am not a communist. I cannot believe I had to write that.
Oh, so you are a double extra secret communist {taps side of nose}
Sorry, my question got removed. But it was a genuine question (curiosity.) I didn’t mean to disparage you.
deleted by creator
There’s a library for JS: https://join-lemmy.org/api/index.html
deleted by creator
There’s a user made OpenAPI spec: https://github.com/MV-GH/lemmy_openapi_spec - You probably mean that one
I’ve had similar issues as you mentioned that the dev did fix - but yea, Typescript has less precision than Rust (the source) or the openapi spec. And the Typescript client is build for Lemmy-JS and not build an example for other language client libraries…
Though the OpenAPI Documents in C# and Java are based on reflection of the source itself, and Rust doesn’t have Reflection like that… So it’s probably difficult for them to add without manually maintaining the OpenAPI specs
I like this, I will contribute to this, I think a lot of Java haters in this thread fail to realize just how massive Java is compared to everything else.
Rust might be the latest, hottest, bestest Java killer out there and it might be a completely superior language to Java, doesn’t matter, it’s dwarfed in terms of how many people actually use it for real projects, projects that should run for years and years. Even if Rust is the true Java killer, it’s gonna take a good few more years for it to kill java, measured in decades, there is just way too many projects and critical stuff out there that is running on Java, that means lots of jobs out there for java, still and still more.
This means there are a lot of senior Java programmers out there with lots of years of experience to contribute to this project.
Plus Lemmy itself having alternatives and choices is just a good thing.
Agreed. I mean COBOL is still a thing, and that’s a language that’s been dead for 30+ years.
I am not a fan of Java. However, I think that you are 100% correct. This is a potentially very useful stack to have available and I hope that the two projects track together well.
This project has potential for high velocity development that Lemmy will never be able to match, purely because of the languages. Rust is, factually, slower to develop in than Java, even for experienced devs. Add to that the greater population that is comfortable with Java, and you have a recipe for really pushing interesting things and innovating quickly. Possibly establishing a relationship somewhat like Debian Sid to Debian Stable. It could also be interesting to have some low-level, Rust modules that are shared between the two when Lemmy gets to 1.0 (API stability), if there is something that is more optimally implemented in Rust but that would introduce more coupling.
Thank you for your perspective
Languages won’t grow if you ditch them for other ones. There’s lots of reasons to use rust, outside of the size of the project
I think you will find that the biggest reason to use a language is to get paid for it and there Java is very well positioned
That’s the reason for for hire devs yeah, but if you are starting a new project ( especially a community one like lemmy where the profit motive is different) choosing your tech stack is a complex decision
Rust is as much of a Java killer as C++ is. You could say Rust is the C++ killer, but I really don’t see how Rust would be that comparable to Java, which operates at a higher level instead of memory and pointer management. IMO, Kotlin is the Java killer.
an alternative Java-based backend
kill it with fire
an alternative Java-based backend to Lemmy’s Rust-based one
Going from a modern well-designed language to an old-and-busted, kitschy, memory-hogging, bloated language. This is literally a step backwards.
Rust, Go… hell, even Ruby-on-Rails or whatever Python is offering nowadays would be a better choice.
I’m a long time Java developer who was recently moved to a project written in Go. All I can say is: What. The. Fuck. I swear, the people who designed the syntax must have been trying to make every wrong decision possible on purpose as a joke. The only think I can think of is that they only made design decisions on the syntax while high on shrooms or something.
Like, why in the actual fuck does the capitalization of a function change the scope??? Who thought that was a good idea? It’s not intuitive AT ALL. Just have a public/private keyword.
I did a lot of Java prior to doing Go. I think they’re both good. I don’t like the Go privacy/scope thing and I genuinely hate it’s error handling but it’s pretty much 90% good pragmatic choices IMO. That said, I still think Java is a fantastic language and it makes a lot of sense for something like Lemmy
Nah, Java is alright. All the old complicated “enterprise” community and frameworks gave it a bad reputation. It was designed to be an easier, less bloated C++ (in terms of features/programming paradigms). It’s also executed fairly efficiently. Last time I checked, the same program written in C would typically take 2x the time to complete in Java; whereas it would take 200x the time to complete in Python. Here’s some recent benchmarks: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/fastest/python3-java.html
I haven’t had a chance to try Rust yet, but want to. Interestingly, Rust scores poorly on source-code complexity: https://benchmarksgame-team.pages.debian.net/benchmarksgame/how-programs-are-measured.html#source-code
Modern Java isn’t that bad, and with new developments like the graalvm and cloud native builds, or what they are called, the footprint of a modern Java app can be comparable to an golang app.
Modern Java kinda has the same image problem as modern PHP. Not saying is all great, but it sure has seen quite the improvements in the last years
they are also working to make developers have less boiler plate. java might be an old language but the development has not stopped but only going better these days.
Or C#, it’s literally “Java, but good”.
The only time I would choose Java for a new project is if I had a hard dependency on something that only works with Java…
Seems like here the number of developers comfortable in Java is a dependency
Next step, is to remake Lemmy in JavaScript. Pure JavaScript, no typescript, only express, nothing else
rewrite it in perl with a flat file database.
I’ve been hearing a lot of good things for a while. Lookin forward to it.
I’m hearing hype from the people making it… dunno why anyone else would have anything positive or negative to say yet
I didn’t know Lemmy was written in Rust.
Lemmy is how I learned about Rust.
This actually makes me want to contribute to lemmy.
I guess my username won’t make sense anymore. But it sounds so good that it doesn’t need to make sense.
That’s okay, no one thinks my username makes sense when it absolutely does.
Idk why that reminded me of a very old Minecraft release where there was a bug where squids can actually fly.
Idk if I misremembered that or if it was an actually real thing.
