Re:The Top Programming Languages 2023
by armchairhacker on Monday September 11, 2023 @08:52AM
(#37466491)
Java has:
- A decent type system, which makes it better than Python, JavaScript, R
- Runtime errors with good stack traces instead of UB for things like invalid casts or null dereference, which makes it better than C++
- Automatic memory management without complex borrowing rules, which makes it (arguably, for some situations) better than Rust
- The JVM targets many different platforms and Java programs often “just work”, which makes it better than Swift
- Decent abstraction, which makes it better than Go
- Large ecosystem, which makes it better than Dart or Nim or Zig
- C#? I’m not sure, C# is a lot like Java. IMO what Java has which is better than C# is Kotlin and better JetBrains support
Now Java isn’t perfect. In fact I prefer Kotlin (always), Rust (despite the increased difficulty), and Swift (if the platform allows) as general-purpose languages. But unlike those, Java is one of the ancient big languages everyone knows about, and compared to the others (JavaScript, Python, C++) it’s the best general-purpose language by far.
- A decent type system, which makes it better than Python, JavaScript, R
- Runtime errors with good stack traces instead of UB for things like invalid casts or null dereference, which makes it better than C++
- Automatic memory management without complex borrowing rules, which makes it (arguably, for some situations) better than Rust
- The JVM targets many different platforms and Java programs often “just work”, which makes it better than Swift
- Decent abstraction, which makes it better than Go
- Large ecosystem, which makes it better than Dart or Nim or Zig
- C#? I’m not sure, C# is a lot like Java. IMO what Java has which is better than C# is Kotlin and better JetBrains support
Now Java isn’t perfect. In fact I prefer Kotlin (always), Rust (despite the increased difficulty), and Swift (if the platform allows) as general-purpose languages. But unlike those, Java is one of the ancient big languages everyone knows about, and compared to the others (JavaScript, Python, C++) it’s the best general-purpose language by far.