Verbosity is not a problem in large code bases. Speed of understanding and debugging of what somebody else wrote is.

So, less magic is better. I will take Java codebase over Scala or Python every time, unless it is a toy script which is 100 lines

Every significant Java codebase I've worked in has had incredible amounts of magic. Between AOP, DI frameworks, APT, reflection, proxies, SPI, Lombok compiler hacks, dynamic classloaders, etc., there is a LOT of magic flying around and it can be quite hard to understand what will happen at runtime.

I’m not a backend java dev but whenever I take a look at java web projects which use spring/jsf/jsp etc frameworks, docs say to handle a request, write a method with that signature, we’ll call it when there is a http request. I always want to know enterence/exit points of a network message but that is impossible with these fancy frameworks. It is pure magic.

Don't forget XML DSLs. Or are we past that?

This is what drove me away from Java; the ungodly amount of magic that's required to make it economic. If it all works, it's fine. But as soon as something fails... Get yourself ready from some frustrating hours.

This. Java communities tried to solve redundant code problem by complex, hard to recognize way.

Still got PTSD from a Hinernate codebase that had all sorts of initialization magic afoot.

Who needs CPP macros when you've got reflection?

I’m talking about the language, not frameworks.

AOP sucks because it is paaaain to debug, proxies are magic. There is Dagger that solve some stuff

ALL Java developers should be required to watch this course (it's Free):

https://software-mastery.teachable.com/p/uncommon-sense

FYI: I am NOT an author of this course.

Java style verbosity hurts readability. That’s the most important issue with Java imho.

Take a look at a http server one in Java and one in C. Readability difference is crazy.

My company is in transition from Java to C, for bunch of stuff just for performance reasons. So, I debug similar projects time to time both in Java and C, http server, in memory cache, iot server etc. After seeing both, I just think although Java has great tooling, it drives developers to write unreadable code.

I mentioned C as a language of choice. Cool kids are picking node js and esoteric Closure, not C

> And yes, Go is less verbose than Java

No, this is utter, utter nonsense. I have written plenty of both, and it's not even close.

If you are going to press this extraordinary claim, you need to supply at least some evidence for it.

We should keep in mind the kind of features, performance, observability the jvm can provide, compare that with the other runtimes and then see if the script to execute is too much :)

Go's error handling is painfully verbose. Go's lack of generics leads to passing empty interfaces everywhere (come on proposal!). Don't act like go doesn't have it's warts. If it wasn't backed by google it wouldn't be nearly as popular as it is.