F# is interesting, Scala is interesting, and we both wondered what it would be like to really try ocaml for real. But Java's just pretty solid. It's not exciting, but it's quality engineering. It makes some questionable trade-offs, but it seems to provoke more hate than it deserves.

Of course, we then rolled our eyes about all the crazy Java stuff we've seen, with XML-everywhere, FactoryFactories, and gratuitous IoC.

That started me wondering: what is it about Java that encourages the craziness? My theory is that it's a combination of garbage collection and lack of easy blocks/anonymous functions. Garbage collection lets you get away with things that you'd never try in C++, and lack of blocks means you're stuck with a pretty limited API, so you end up inventing extra-language channels for information.

Note: I intentionally didn't demand closures. I think the original blocks in Smalltalk weren't closures, but they were still useful for things like "monkeys select: [:m | m throwsPoop]". I'm not sure if this is really enough; closures make some things a lot easier.

It doesn't hurt when you're trying to rack up a lot of billable errors and keep clients dependent on you.

These resulting structures then end up being factories (You could pass the object creation function), command objects (you could have a function to call instead of a command to pass back) and so on.

The problem is called lack of skills, not the language.

I don't know what it is about Java that seems to encourage the mess, but there is something.

I have seen lots of awful code, when you combine software design done by out of touch architects, with lousy enterprise coders, regardless of the chosen language.