On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 3:37 AM, Alexey Zinger <[email protected]> wrote:
>
>
> This is gonna be about verbosity of generics, isn't it?
Hi Alexey!
The switch to Java 5 certainly added alot of cruft for API developers with
regards to the addition of Generics.
But this is not about Generics, this is about all the small things adding up
- turning Java into a boilerplatey language when building abstractions/APIs.
When I switched from Java to Scala, I suddenly noticed a rather striking
difference: In Java there's alot of "supporting" code; and in Scala, there
is alot less.
This means that you spend less time writing code, and more time thinking
about the solution.
Compare:
Scala:
*case class Person(var name : String)*
Java:
*public class Person
{
public Person(String name)
{
super();
this.name = name;
}
private String name;
public String getName()
{
return name;
}
public void setName(String name)
{
this.name = name;
}
@Override
public int hashCode()
{
final int prime = 31;
int result = 1;
result = prime * result + ((name == null) ? 0 : name.hashCode());
return result;
}
@Override
public boolean equals(Object obj)
{
if (this == obj)
return true;
if (obj == null)
return false;
if (getClass() != obj.getClass())
return false;
Person other = (Person) obj;
if (name == null)
{
if (other.name != null)
return false;
}
else if (!name.equals(other.name))
return false;
return true;
}
}
*
While the above is just a trivial example, it would think it accentuates my
point.
I spent a couple of hours the day before yesterday rewriting an event
dispatch API in Java, trying to expose the most clean consumer interface as
possible, and I really felt I had to jump through hoops in order to be able
to do just that. But when written in Scala, not only was the resulting API
code about 30% of the LoC, but it also exposed a _cleaner_ interface.
That's when the question to write libraries in Scala to be consumed by Java
application code.
Hence this thread.
Viktor
>
> Alexey
>
>
>
> --- On Tue, 5/5/09, Dave Watson <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > From: Dave Watson <[email protected]>
> > Subject: [The Java Posse] Re: Java as API language, its days numbered?
> > To: "The Java Posse" <[email protected]>
> > Date: Tuesday, May 5, 2009, 9:10 PM
> > What does this mean, exactly? Can you elaborate more about
> > the 85% of
> > your code that is boilerplate?
> >
> > Not trying to argue, I'm just very puzzled by what this
> > might mean....
> >
> > On May 5, 5:27 pm, Viktor Klang
> > <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > Greetings posse,
> > >
> > > having spent more than half a decade writing API:s in
> > Java I feel that since
> > > Java 5 was introduced, more and more time has to be
> > spent writing
> > > boilerplate API code to try to save the API consumers
> > from jumping through
> > > hoops in order to get stuff done. Because we all want
> > easily consumable
> > > libraries, don't we?
> > >
> > > Having jumped onto the Scala bandwagon about 1½ years
> > ago I feel like the
> > > ratio of business end code of Java is appro 15% while
> > in Scala it's more
> > > like 65%
> > >
> > > <observation>You can most likely substitute
> > "Scala" in the text below with
> > > any non-Java JVM language</observation>
> > >
> > > With Scala getting more and more cleaner to be
> > consumed by Java code, isn't
> > > there plenty of good reasons to switch to Scala for
> > library code, while
> > > letting the application developers stay i Java-land?
> > >
> > > --
> > > Viktor Klang
> > > Known from the Internet
> >
>
>
>
> >
>
--
Viktor Klang
Senior Systems Analyst
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