Re:If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy
by TimPC on Thursday October 10, 2013 @12:59AM
(#6525732)
Excessive typing isn't the issue. The problem with verbose code is that code gets read way more than it gets written. In Java you're often reading 15 lines of code for something that could be 2-3 in other languages.
Re:If Java Is Dying, It Sure Looks Awfully Healthy
by danieldk on Thursday October 10, 2013 @02:30AM
(#6526010)
And still, I have seen plenty of Java code which is perfectly readable and Haskell, Perl, or Ruby code (2-3 lines) that resembled line noise. And I am a Haskell fan :).
The worst offender in Java are IMO anonymous inner classes. But IntelliJ shows them abbreviated. E.g. IIRC Runnables are displayed in Java 8 lambda syntax.
And as the article points out, for readability, verbosity is arguably a good thing. I sure believe it is, perhaps because I am more distracted by poor symbol selection and syntax than most programmers I know. Speaking of, I don't particularly like the C-lineage syntax, Java included. I don't like the braces and parentheses. I prefer a syntax with fewer symbols and more keywords. Crazy, I know.