Re:Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching
by haspok on Monday October 19, 2026 @06:34AM
(#50150672)
> which was written in a language that no other consultant wants to touch.
...or maybe they are not willing to pay a high enough price for said consultants? I can guarantee you there would be many takers for the right price.
Some could say that the higher price is not justified, but that is a different discussion. Some others could also argue that if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys...
Re:Java sealed classes and exhaustive pattern matching
by quietbritishjim on Monday October 19, 2026 @06:48AM
(#50150776)
The higher price is perhaps not justified in the sense that the software could surely have been built in a simpler language for which more (cheaper) consultants were available to maintain it.
i.e. today's consultant is justified in charging that price, but yesterday's developer was not justified in using Scala which caused such high future maintenance costs.
I have been working in product development for 25+ years, and I have friends in different organizations all over Italy, where I live. They told me many horror stories of clients who had custom software built by consultants using Scala because it was cool, and few years later the consultants disappeared and the client remained with a sophisticate piece of software that is crucial for their business, which was written in a language that no other consultant wants to touch.
In short, while there are better languages out there, Java is a decent language with a large developer base and from a long term perspective and from a risk management point of view, Java is still the best choice for me. The latest revision of the Tiobe index shows Java at fourth place while Kotlin and Scala rank respectively 32nd and 40th place.