🙀️ What is this thing called Dave?
🐧️ Where possible I like to develop under Linux (and have done so since the 0.96c.2 boot/root disk days)
☕️ I'm a professional Java developer with a zillion years experience in enterprise
🦀️ Currently I'm getting to be usefully incompetent in Rust
🐍️ and Python
🇬🇧️ I'm a Brit
🇸🇪️ But I live and work in Sweden (och jag pratar lite dåligt svenska)
✉️ I can be contacted by email as [email protected]
📜️ For longer writings see my blog at paperstack.com
I enjoy reading Hacker News, but boy do they have a downer on Java. Meanwhile the ne plus ultra of blub languages keeps on trucking.
The arguments against it usually boil down to:
- It's kind of verbose
- It's not the latest hot and sexy
- It doesn't have
${feature_du_jour}
That's then usually rounded off with grudging acceptance that the JVM is alright and maybe a nod to Scala or Kotlin. A few half hearted javanauts defend it, and then the circus rolls out of town.
I have to say, it IS kind of verbose, it is NOT the latest hot and sexy, and ${feature_du_jour} usually turns up just after (or several years/decades after) a new shiny thing is fiercely outshining that.
On the other hand it's rock solid, has vast libraries, and is manageable for terrifyingly large teams. If you want to roll your own startup in three weeks flat you'd be insane to use it. If you want to write a big complicated back-end application that will still be in action twenty years from now without needing 15 consecutive rewrites then you would be a little eccentric not to at least consider it.
Anyway, I'm super biased, having been mucking around in Java since the 1.1.x days. I've written books on various libraries and tools and seen Java used to good and bad effect in all sorts of companies. I even messed with Visual J++ once upon a time (but I cleaned my fingernails afterwards).
In the end it's mostly the people that matter. Pick a solid language and don't be too worried what the mayflies call it.
I'm dabbling in Rust more and more - and I like it a lot. I've started creating a few tools and it's becoming my go-to language for those kinds of self-contained things. We'll see where that takes me; I'd love to use it more often professionally when the occasion arises.
I'm also beginning to mess around with Python. Not a huge amount so far, but I built a tagging site based off of the Hacker News story feed and the implementation of that was surprisingly fun. I'll probably dig a bit deeper now I'm starting to feel less comprehensively ignorant about the language. I have a suspicion that diving into this properly after the emergence of the uv package and project manager tool saved me a world of grief.
I have some neolithic Javascript skills but it's time I bit the bullet and learnt some Typescript. It's not the language so much as the constant flux of the build tools that makes me nervous there, but I think it's time I pushed myself more in the "full-stack" versus "backender" direction. We'll see how I progress on that.
Aside from programming for fun and profession I have a few other strings to my bow. I've written a few tech books, some with my co-author Jeff Linwood, others (that mostly sank without trace) solo. I'm an over-enthusiastic swing dancer, almost exclusively dancing Balboa these days. I even teach some of the beginner tracks with my wife here in Stockholm. Plus I read a lot, pet the cat, and eat biscuits. It's a tough old life.
