Java

"There are only two kinds of languages: the ones people complain about and the ones nobody uses" - Bjarne Stroustrup

"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.

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

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'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.

Modern Java is exciting. I choose it willingly for personal projects. And it remains my preference for professional ones.

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.

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.