Re:Java 1.0 Turns 25
by acdha on Saturday January 23, 2021 @11:16AM
(#25883338)
I blame the culture, too. It’s unreal how many programmers have internalized this idea that simple code is somehow a personal failing.
One factor I’ve thought about is how many Java programmers seem to have learned design by looking at things like the Java core libraries or a few open source frameworks, without recognizing that most people are not writing code intended to be generally reusable by millions of projects and that popularity means those projects cannot modernize their style easily, either. People write new code on new projects today as if it still needs to be compatible with the early 2000s because much of the code they learned from ossified around that time, and will claim it’s “best practice” because otherwise why would this Oracle/Apache API still use it?
One factor I’ve thought about is how many Java programmers seem to have learned design by looking at things like the Java core libraries or a few open source frameworks, without recognizing that most people are not writing code intended to be generally reusable by millions of projects and that popularity means those projects cannot modernize their style easily, either. People write new code on new projects today as if it still needs to be compatible with the early 2000s because much of the code they learned from ossified around that time, and will claim it’s “best practice” because otherwise why would this Oracle/Apache API still use it?