Link to the thread: https://programming.dev/post/8969747
Hello everyone, I’ve followed this thread yesterday and noticed a few very negative reactions towards the choice of Java. I follow Java evolution from far away, but it seemed like it was evolving in a good direction since the last few years, and that performance-wise it would make sense for the back-end of a Lemmy-like platform.
Is it indeed the case? I was just curious to see that much negativity towards one of the most popular languages.
“There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses” - Bjarne Stroustrup
Nice quote
Well Lemmy is Rust - Plus Lemmy is already an alternative for Reddit, so all the “normies” are still on Reddit - So Lemmy itself is already a bit of a niche sample size.
Rust developers are already known (/memed) to be elitist about Rust - and “Java is Bad” is also just the general consensus among developers, especially ones using more niche languages
Rust developers are already known (/memed) to be elitist about Rust
They’re also extremely toxic. An example from 4 months ago when they vandalized cppreference.com :
The meme is that most Rust devs merely shout slogans like “memory-safety” without knowing what they mean, precisely because many of them come from web dev backgrounds (this video by Prime Time proves why that’s problematic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz0H8HFkI9U , the guy has no clue what
std::unique_ptris) and have never touched a pointer in their lives. Easy and “appealing to hobbyists” languages are always an issue as the community usually ends up becoming toxic and full of wrong practices being normalized, and a prime example of that is PHP.Another example is how Lemmy initially struggled to handle 10k~20k users during the Reddit exodus despite the backend being written in the “ultra-fast memory-safe totally-will-replace-C++” Rust. Why? See this: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/2877 and they were doing stuff like joining huge-ass tables before the filtering. If phiresky didn’t save them with his SQL prowess Lemmy would have literally died and its backend being written in Rust would not have changed a single thing.
Rust gives hobbyists the illusion that their projects will suddenly become fast and bug-free if they write them in Rust, and they don’t even hide that mentality as you can see that on almost every single project that’s written in Rust they list “written in Rust” as the main selling argument. This is probably the only language I’ve seen where this happens.
Now as for the “Java bad”, I’m kind of guilty of it too. I very much dislike how academia is obsessed with UML diagrams and the “Java way” of seeing OOP and interfaces everywhere. CPUs and GPUs do not think in OOP. They do not see “objects”. They see data, registers, caches, branches but certainly not your “beautiful abstract class”. When you think you did a good job of crafting a “clean” UML diagram with lots of “nice interfaces” which you then implement using virtual polymorphism in C++ and abuse
dynamic_cast, you’re torturing the CPU with indirections, cache misses and branch mispredictions. Dynamic polymorphism and virtual inheritance in particular should not be the standard way to solve problems, yet that’s exactly what academia teaches and most of those who push those ideas coincidentally also happen to be from Java backgrounds and that’s why the “Java bad” meme is still alive.That said, beyond academia, I think it’s obviously stupid to religiously shit on Java. Lot’s of advanced features are coming out, Android is a thing thanks to Java and lots of web services are working with high reliability thanks to it. Also obviously, one has a much better chance at landing a high-paid software engineering job if one knows Java than if one knew only Rust.
Now as for the “Java bad”, I’m kind of guilty of it too. I very much dislike how academia is obsessed with UML diagrams.
I’m kind of guilty of that too - in mindset - I just don’t go around and shitpost about Java.
My dislike for Java also came from academia, since I had to use it in school. Though my main problem was just the general tool chain of Java. Like we had to use Eclipse or NetBeans. And then we had to write stuff in “JavaBeans” When instead of a normal “Person” class, you’d have to have a “PersonBean” and everything was so weird. And all the packages and references would constantly break or be missing, both in the project and even in the IDE itself…
After moving to C# and using Visual Studio, NetBeans just feels like you’re trying to build a house with a rock instead of hammer, on an already crooked foundation.
Though that was a long time ago. I assume things have improved. But I never really had any reason to go back to Java
C# will definitely spoil Java for you. Even modern Java, there’s just no going back from the .Net ecosystem without feeling like you’re timetraveling 10 years.
They’re also extremely toxic. An example from 4 months ago when they vandalized cppreference.com
What does this even mean? One dopey teenager defaces a website, so now everyone associated with Rust is toxic?
This whole argument is just young edgelords bickering with old edgelords, in an eternal and pointless cycle.
Just curious, what other languages have had “one dopey teenager” of their community go and deface cppreference.com ? (which by the way happened multiple times with Rust kiddies, not just 4 months ago)
It doesn’t really change their point though.
Re: “the guy has no clue what
std::unique_ptris”, are you saying that because of his assertion thatunique_ptrhas a non-zero cost, whereas Rust’sBoxdoes not?He’s actually correct about that, although the difference is fairly minimal, and I believe the difference is outweighed by the unwinding (i.e. panic/exception handling) code that needs to be generated in both cases. But with unwinding disabled, you can see clearly that Rust generates exactly the same code for a
Boxas for a raw pointer, whereas C++ does not:The reason I looked into this is because of a Chandler Carruth talk primarily about
unique_ptrcalled “There Are No Zero-Cost Abstractions”, which explains in detail why C++ fundamentally can’t optimizeunique_ptrto generate the same code as a raw pointer.That’s a bad apples-to-oranges comparison,
unique_ptrfrees memory upon destruction, which with the raw pointer version you don’t do. The least you could do is use rvalue references. The class layout ofunique_ptris also hard to optimize away (unless via LTO) becauseconsumeisn’t in the same translation unit and the compiler has to let your binary be ABI compatible with the rest of your binaries. (Also, you’re using Clang 9 by the way, we are at version 17 now)This is much fairer: https://godbolt.org/z/v4PYcd8hf
Then, if you additionally make the functions’ bodies accessible to the compiler and add a
freeto the raw pointer version (for fairness if you insist to haveconsumeorfoodestroy the resource), you should get an almost identical assembly code (with still an extra indirection that you’ll see in an extramovdue to the fact that the C++ compiler still doesn’t see how you use them, but IMO that should still be a textbook case for LTO), and the non-zero difference should disappear altogether once you actually use those functions and if it doesn’t you absolutely should file a bug report.Carruth, while an excellent presenter, has been on a “C++ standard committee bad, why don’t we do more ABI-breaking changes, y’all suck, Abseil and Carbon rule” rant spree, with that basically materialized by Google stopping active participation in Clang (haven’t followed the drama since then so not sure if Google backtracked on that decision), and it’s hard to consider him to be objective about this since he also has the Carbon project and his recent Carbon talks are painful to watch as it’s hard to ignore how he’s going from a “C++ optimization chad” that he used to be to a Google marketing/sales person.
That’s a bad apples-to-oranges comparison,
unique_ptrfrees memory upon destruction, which with the raw pointer version you don’t do.I intentionally crafted an example where the code is simply using
unique_ptr(andBox) without freeing the memory, just as it uses the raw pointer without freeing it. Theconsumesfunction would of course free it, hence the name. Freeing the memory shouldn’t be all that different betweenfree,~unique_ptr, andBox::drop.Moreover, the Rust code is doing the same thing the C++ code is doing;
Boxfrees memory just likeunique_ptrdoes.The least you could do is use rvalue references.
I was surprised to see how much lower-overhead that looks, and I couldn’t remember why I originally wrote the example as passing by value until I reviewed Carruth’s video. But he actually talks about using rvalue references around the 22 minute mark, and then goes back to passing by value, so I assume that’s why I wrote it the way I did. I do think it’s pretty counterintuitive that a type that’s semantically a pointer needs to be passed by reference for efficiency.
The class layout of
unique_ptris also hard to optimize away (unless via LTO)…The “class layout” of
unique_ptris just a pointer; are you talking about the struct needing to be on the stack in order to satisfy the ABI? That’s true, but people do in fact need to pass data between multiple different translation units (and even into and out of dynamically-loaded libraries), so that should be possible to do in an efficient manner. And, again, both the raw-pointer version and the Rust version manage to make this work.you’re using Clang 9 by the way…
Oops, good catch; I crafted this example a long time ago and did try it with the most recent version, but I guess that must have been in a different tab. But it doesn’t actually make much of a difference here.
Then, if you additionally make the functions’ bodies accessible to the compiler and add a free to the raw pointer version… and the non-zero difference should disappear altogether once you actually use those functions…
Yes, sure, compiling in one translation unit helps, but as I mentioned above, passing an owning pointer between translation units shouldn’t be inherently inefficient. But also, as far as I can tell, making those changes doesn’t actually make the
unique_ptrand raw-pointer assembly equivalent. Thein the signature for “consumes” is odd because the function doesn’t actually take ownership of the pointer so it doesn’t actually free it, and consequently the inlining of the function is a no-op and the destructor is called insidefoo. But that doesn’t hinder the raw-pointer comparison much, because the C version just inlinesconsumes. I don’t read assembly well enough to understand whether the extramovin theunique_ptrversion is very significant or why it exists. (Theprint_globalfunction is only here to prevent the other functions from being turned into no-ops.)https://godbolt.org/z/83T8Gfszv
“Abseil and Carbon rule…”
Abseil is…a collection of C++ libraries? How does that make him biased against the C++ standards committee? Carbon was announced in 2022, and the talk I linked was given in 2019, so I don’t know if Carruth was on his “rant spree” in your opinion at that point. But the point of linking to Carruth’s talk was just to explain where that example originally came from and to let someone more knowledgeable than myself explain why it would require ABI breakage for C++ to optimize
unique_ptras well as Rust optimizesBox.The reason I said to use rvalue references is because otherwise it is an apples-to-oranges comparison: in the C++ code you have implicit ABI decisions around the call convention and whose responsibility it is to destroy the temporary.
Yes, sure, compiling in one translation unit helps, but as I mentioned above, passing an owning pointer between translation units shouldn’t be inherently inefficient
https://godbolt.org/z/9875qMM6Y (or alternatively: https://godbolt.org/z/9xehs3sYP)
The assembly is identical, the ownership is clearly transferred, and this doesn’t need LTO or looking at the function bodies and is entirely done by the C++ compiler. It involves using (when available) a vendor attribute (see trivial_abi, shouldn’t be an issue given Rust devs are fine with having only one compiler anyway) and writing a
UniquePtrclass (shouldn’t be used in production code, what I’ve given there is only for illustration purposes) that assumes that the custom deleter cannot have an internal state.This is a zero-runtime-cost abstraction. Now whether the zeroing of that cost can depend on what ABI assumptions you’re ready to make, or whether you want to depend on LTO is another thing. We’re literally discussing a “problem” that is not really a problem because Rust doesn’t have the luxury yet to have that problem: you’re easily forgetting that Rust has only one compiler.
Carbon was announced in 2022
A project like that usually takes years, so again, very likely that they began working on it years before that. For instance, Google designed Go in 2007 and announced it in November 2009.
So…you had to make your own version of
unique_ptrto make it zero-cost? Doesn’t that just confirm the original statement you were disagreeing with, thatunique_ptrhas a small runtime cost? Or was there some other reason you thought the creator of the video you shared has “no idea” whatunique_ptris?I also don’t understand why the standard library can’t use the trivial-abi attribute. Different implementations of the standard library aren’t required to be interoperable, are they?
I still don’t understand what you think is “apples-to-oranges” here. If you change the Rust code to require the C ABI, there’s no difference in the generated code: https://godbolt.org/z/1xf9qG3n8
Thank you for the detailed answer
“Java bad” is a pretty long standing meme. I would guess that most peoples’ only experiences with java are in school and in monstrous, ancient corporate codebases.
I guess. I learned a few things though, so it seems that new version of Java are optimized so that their footprint is similar to Go? That seems a nice improvement from a few years back
Speaking anecdotally, I’ve yet to see a modern Java codebase. But again, that’s just anecdotally, and I’m (truly) sure they exist. Just that I’ve not had the fortune of being around it. Is that a bad thing?
Java is a boilerplate-driven language designed for writing verbose, object oriented, instant-legacy code
People hate Java when they are forced to use it. Or when they switch from other language to the Java and expect same semantics and behaviour. Historically Java was quite bad in character/sense ratio this coupled with Enterprise patterns and people who have no idea how to write programs on java resulted in atrocious code bases with nightmare episodes. Currently I am writing non-stop Java for about 15 years. And I am able to tolerate Java quirks, because I know how to side step them. I don’t like Java, but given the choice I would pick it as a language that I am willing to code for money out of many others. Java have amazing ecosystem, ci/cd culture and instruments. Dunking on “bad” language is okay especially in the joke context.
In the end there is no ideal language, they are just more or less fitting for a task or role.
Java is a great language. Hating Java is just snobbery
Modern Java is exciting. I choose it willingly for personal projects. And it remains my preference for professional ones.
I’m not a programmer, but I’m interested in your opinion. Could you explain why modern java is exciting in relatively layman terminology?
I guess Java saw the writing on the wall and shifted into high gear. The rate of language development has shot up. Check out all these changes to the language.
I get the sense that the people who think these out are smart and deliberate. I like deliberate.
And there’s more coming. Value classes (custom, compound primitives is my understanding) is only one example. The fact that that document even exists is exciting to me. I like reading the instruction manuals for my tools!
The standardized documentation, the culture, the tools, the libraries. After stumbling around C++ all of that was a breath of fresh air. Java is a joy for me. I’ve been doing it since the 1.1, 1.2 days.
And so y’all know, right now I’m being paid to write Kotlin. I fully intend to integrate its styles and idioms. I get why people like it. Every now and then I do go, “Huh. That’s neat.” I’d still pick Java over it if I were given a choice. But I gotta pay the bills.
Boimler’s great, but right now you sound like Rutherford. I mean that in the best possible way.
As I started before, I don’t really get programming, but your enthusiasm for java is evident, and I find that delightful.
I’ll take the compliment, thank you!
When I do it on my terms, yes, I do enjoy Java in particular and programming in general. A lot. At a certain level it’s not complicated or mystical at all. All you’re really doing is simple math (adding, subtracting, etc) on numbers, bunching them into representations that make sense for your problem (how a point is an x coordinate and a y coordinate, for example), moving little arrows that point to said representations, etc. You combine these very simple primitives into a predictable system that solves whatever you’re working on. Yeah, you do have to be able to abstract this in your brain. Pictures on paper helps sometimes; I do that myself.
I come in with a maintainability mindset. I enjoy writing simple, to the point, straightforward code that most importantly, I can read and understand in 10 years. Java’s “verboseness” is a feature in that respect. Have you tried maintaining someone else’s Kotlin? Forgetaboutit.
Interesting, I guess I should have a look at the latest updates
Personally java is still my favorite language. I program in others as well but when I’m free to pick a language java is still my go-to and I love a lot of the new features that have been added. This project is definitely really cool and I might even give it a drive.
I think Java is fine and I still believe its the best beginner language, but once annotations and reflections took over, especially with stuff like Spring, Mapstruct, … . Everything turned into an unpredictable, memoryhogging, undebugable mess.
Its not really a fault of the language, just how many people (ab)use it! Having to help out in these projects from time to time I get why people hate it!
Java’s niche is middleware and ‘big data’, so choosing it for a Lemmy drop in replacement an excellent choice.
Programming goes through various fads where a particular language is everyones favourite for a while (see the plethora of this is X tool … rewritten in Rust!).
You’ve had Scala, Node.JS, Go, Python and now Rust try to supplant Java in its middleware role. Each one has tried to highlight reasons why Java is bad to justify the switch.
Java is not a bad object oriented language, and add lots of folks have pointed out here there are plenty of cool new things coming to the language. Lots of folks get a bad taste in school, and there’s a lot of bad Java code out there, but modern Java is a fine language. It’s powerful, can be surprisingly efficient and it’s widely supported. That said, even good Java has some downsides. The best practices are pretty boiler plate heavy. The oop structure the language is built on is going out of fashion in many domains for good reasons. Personally I find it always feels dated. While modern Java has added features that bring it up to par with other languages, it doesn’t feel as cohesive or well structured in as newer languages that either made better choices initially, or make breaking changes to correct issues with correctness, ergonomics, and maintenance.
Honestly I do think java is kinda bad, but that doesn’t really matter that much if you’re not developing in it. Haven’t looked through the thread but it sounds like people are just being armchair elitists. I would prefer not to code in java but when I’m just using software there are a lot of things that are more important than what language is written in.
