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.

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[–] twistypencil@lemmy.world 111 points 7 months ago (6 children)

Too bad it's java

[–] SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone 68 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I see you woke up and chose violence.

[–] twistypencil@lemmy.world 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I just self host and avoid Java like the plague due to how annoying it is to manage

[–] Ugurcan@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

3 billion devices can't be wrong…

[–] Corngood@lemmy.ml 60 points 7 months ago (4 children)

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. 😭

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 34 points 7 months ago

Yup. Welcome to the world of Java where such things are not only silly but encouraged.

[–] pineapple_pizza@lemmy.dexlit.xyz 24 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Most IDEs will handle the imports for you and auto collapse them

[–] YourAvgMortal@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Ignoring the problem doesn’t make it better

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 8 points 7 months ago (2 children)

How would you do "better" imports then?

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

*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.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Isn't Go just the equivalent of only doing asterisk-imports in Java, just without (and fair enough, Java has 0 need to do that 😂) repeating the import-keyword?

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago

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…

[–] uranibaba@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

deleted

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] Corngood@lemmy.ml 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Here's an example:

https://github.com/sublinks/sublinks-api/blob/main/src/main/java/com/sublinks/sublinksapi/community/listeners/CommunityLinkPersonCommunityCreatedListener.java

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:

https://github.com/sublinks/sublinks-api/blob/main/src/main/java/com/sublinks/sublinksapi/community/listeners/CommunityLinkPersonCommunityDeletedListener.java

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.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

Yeah but that's more on the coder. Like you indirectly say, they could just as well have had a single listener for community update events, since they all share the data structure for such events (I would assume, haven't looked around too much).

And to me as a professional java coder, I will say it's just not complex. The scaffolding you mentally discard after a week of working with Java unless you're looking for something related to do the scaffolding - and then it's cool that it's all explicitly there, this has helped me countless times in my career and is one of the big strengths of such verbose languages - and beyond that and some design choices I would not have made that way related to naming and organization, there's not much code there to begin with. In modern Java you might just do this in a lambda supplied in the place where you hook the events, anyways.

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 7 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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. 🤷

[–] kameecoding@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Its still better than any python project lol

[–] TunaLobster@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Really? I find python imports to work very similar to cpp in practice.

[–] Rooki@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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 )

[–] derin@lemmy.beru.co 8 points 7 months ago

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).

[–] magic_lobster_party@kbin.social 23 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (2 children)

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.

[–] originalucifer@moist.catsweat.com 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

i know right! same thing with PHP! many progs decades experience hahaha

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Same thing with COBOL! So many devs with ... Wait. Are any COBOL devs even alive still?

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CosmicCleric@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

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.

[–] ericjmorey@discuss.online 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

PHP has been having a resurgence in popularity because it works.

[–] hansl@lemmy.world 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

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.

[–] dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Also you don't have to worry about memory management

[–] kattenluik@feddit.nl 2 points 7 months ago

You don't with Rust either.

[–] dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world 17 points 7 months ago (2 children)

There's nothing wrong with java

[–] remotelove@lemmy.ca 10 points 7 months ago

There is nothing inherently wrong with Java I would speculate, but it can be a royal pain in the ass to manage if you just need one application to work.

I know the basics of the language, but from what I have seen managing it, I don't like it. Just from being in security, I constantly hit barriers with devs because of versioning issues. There is always some ancient app running on a version of Java that can't be updated, for whatever reason. Version management is always a pain, but with Java? Goddamn.

I admit ignorance about the details of Java and how awesome it is for job security. There is no way in hell I could even debate anyone who has watched a single video on YouTube about Java. However, from what I have seen, it either works great or it fails explosively with billions of randomly allocated threads attempting to suck memory from every other server within 50 miles.

If it's awesome to code with, cool. I am just a little salty from my experiences, as you can tell.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Well, it wears down your keyboard.

[–] dandroid@dandroid.app 4 points 7 months ago

If you have a good IDE, and Java has the best IDEs of any language I have used, then auto complete will take care of most of that for you.

[–] mark@programming.dev 12 points 7 months ago (2 children)

Lol how about one written in NodeJS? 😆

[–] MeanEYE@lemmy.world 6 points 7 months ago

Brainfuck would be my choice if we are making things harder for ourselves.

[–] Carighan@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

I bet there are forks already. NodeJS is quite popular really.

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 5 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I love Java.

[–] BarbecueCowboy@kbin.social 15 points 7 months ago (2 children)

As someone who used to be a Java programmer, I can't make any sense of that statement.

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] BURN@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] sentient_loom@sh.itjust.works -1 points 7 months ago

Right. And then you'll write better code when you do use Python or JavaScript or whatever.

[–] dylanTheDeveloper@lemmy.world -1 points 7 months ago

As someone who mostly uses C++ and C# Java is much easier for most projects