Why I (still) like Java

From the day I started programming, I have been on different camps on the battle between strongly typed and weekly typed languages at different times.

For close to 2 years I was working on a java project and at that time I used to wonder why it was designed to be so strongly typed. I have to declare each and every variable, initialize them, cast them properly if I am converting their data type etc and at times I used to get frustrated at the type of errors the complier throws at me every time I try to compile them. I wished I could tell the complier to stop guessing what I was trying to do and that I am smarter than it.

But now I understand their importance. I have recently started working on an ASP project (yes it is not migrated to ASP.NET yet!) and in last week I spent around half a day trying to figure out what was wrong in my code. All I got was just a simple ‘type mismatch’ error. The same lines of code were working perfectly in another page but not on this particular page. It was just an assignment statement which was calling a method and was assigning the return value to a variable.

After hours of debugging (with lot of head banging’s and nail bytes) I found out that I have forgotten to include the file in which that method was declared. If it had been my Java dear then it wouldn’t have thrown the apt ‘Method not found’ error the very first time I complied it. And I would have saved some a couple of hours of my time (and also my head and nails) 😉

Ohh my dear Java, I miss you very much dear..

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  • Rajiv Shankar says:

    And had you used Eclipse, you would have not wasted even two minutes !!

  • Sudar says:

    I was using IDEA and like Eclipse it will let me know that there is a problem with the code even without compiling.

    I miss all these nowâ?¦ 🙁

    Cheers,
    Sudar

  • Aswin Anand says:

    Netbeans is becoming great… 😀

  • Sudar says:

    Ya Aswin, Netbeans is a good alternative if you cannot afford or doesn’t need the full features set of IDEA.

    More than the IDE I miss the features of Java 🙁

    So what are you using for your current project?

    Cheers,
    Sudar

  • Aswin Anand says:

    I’m doing a SMS scheduler called “CrapSMS” using netbeans on Java ME.

    Btw, I just designed a simple page here. Check it and tell me.

  • Yuvi says:

    Hehe, switch to ASP.NET+VB 05, and you’ll get that mistake before you compile, just as in Java….

    Ah, Java/C#/C. How I love the “semicolon expected” errors: If the compiler expects a freakin semicolon, then why can’t it just put it there?:D

    What I say is useless I guess, because you’re a professional, while I just do stuff just to do stuff. But, maybe, even when I’m old enough to be a professional, I’ll be lucky to stay with just dear ol’ VB and Python..

  • Rajiv Shankar says:

    Yuvi you are absolutely right – If the compiler expects a freakin semicolon, then why canâ??t it just put it there?.

    That’s why I still consider VB and the Visual Studio IDE as my favourites to code with !!

    🙂

  • Sudar says:

    @Yuvi,

    Well we are convincing our client to migrate to ASP.NET and itâ??s just a matter of time and till then we need to manage the code in old ASP itself 🙁

  • Aswin Anand says:

    Ah!! the clients :), they give you business and hell a lot of problems too :D… he he

  • Sudar says:

    Aswin,

    Actually our business is to solve their problems right? 😉

    Or put it this way. If they don’t have problems then we don’t have business 😉

    Cheers,
    Sudar

  • Aswin Anand says:

    Yeah!! its the chicken and egg problem 😉

  • Sudar says:

    Haha Exactly.. 🙂

    Cheers,
    Sudar

  • Java has always been my beaconlight. I have been in ASP Scripting programming and a brief sojourn with open source ventures like Perl and PHP till about mid of 2002. The advent of Varadarajan as my techlead in my previous organization introduced me briefly into Java and then slowly into enterprise application development in .NET technologies.

    I love Java’s strictness and disciplined approach, which I humbly feel, when followed religiously, would help a cleaner maintainable code for any one across the globe.

  • Sudar says:

    I love Java�s strictness and disciplined approach, which I humbly feel, when followed religiously, would help a cleaner maintainable code for any one across the globe.

    exactly..

    Cheers,
    Sudar

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