
More than 2800 developers speak out about Java 8 - theotown
http://typesafe.com/blog/java-8-survey-results
======
clumsysmurf
I primarily use "Java" on Android. I'm very excited to see the language
progressing. Recently, I read Gosling gave Oracle a B+ on stewardship of the
language:

[http://www.javaworld.com/article/2087444/open-source-
tools/j...](http://www.javaworld.com/article/2087444/open-source-tools/james-
gosling-grades-oracles-handling-of-suns-technology.html)

However, I'm getting pretty nervous with the lack of conformance Android Java
has to the real Java stack. The two are diverging, and I don't see how Google
can remedy this.

My guess is that Java 6 & 7 were modest enough that many developers of open
source libraries thought it easy to support a profile that worked on Android.

If Java 8 adoption is as brisk as this poll suggests, with all the features
many have been waiting for, I'm worried a lot of the libraries I use may
become incompatible with Android.

Already, its hit and miss if a open source java library works on android. I
just tried lmax disruptor and it didn't work. Things that depend on NIO.2
won't work either.

~~~
JVerstry
My bet is that sooner or later, Google will drop Java on Android for Node
Javascript. It is only a matter of time...

~~~
camus2
yeah whatever, they will never do that.

Did you forget Google created Dart because Javascript is a stupid mess? Google
has at least 2 languages (Dart/Go) to try on before they'd even think about
that turd that is javascript. And the list goes on GWT .... Google is
definetly a Java shop,doing everything not to code in javascript.

~~~
brlewis
I'm also of the opinion that Google will not replace Java-based Android with
nodejs-based Android.

On the other hand, I think it's worth pointing out that a lot of JavaScript
development does happen at Google, albeit within the confines of the Closure
compiler. Some kind of nodejs project somewhere at Google would not be out of
the question. It's a big company.
[https://www.npmjs.org/package/closurecompiler](https://www.npmjs.org/package/closurecompiler)

~~~
camus2
my point is given the success of all these javascript only mobile plateforms,
it's not going to happen.If one wants to develop js apps,the web is here and
free.That's why these weboses make little sense.

------
jamhan
Can someone please moderate the title? The actual blog article title is "Java
8 Survey Results". The given HN title of "More than 2800 developers speak out
about Java 8" is misleading, if not an outright lie.

~~~
maaaats
I'm not a native speaker, but the for me the connotation in the title is that
people are negative to Java8. Is that correct?

~~~
kibwen
"Speak out" in that context is not universally negative, but it does tend to
imply criticism.

------
fauigerzigerk
They say "That being said, the sample, while not scientifically random, is
double what’s considered statistically relevant for the total population of
Java developers worldwide."

Great. So to forecast the next presidential election they're going to poll a
million NRA members and celebrate the fact that the sample size is much
greater than what's needed.

~~~
pessimizer
What's 'scientifically' random? Is that like normal random, but with its
highfallutin' nose stuck up in the air?

~~~
tel
When drawing a survey population that you want to use to extend knowledge to
the total population you need to sample in a way that doesn't introduce bias.
The Simple Random Sampling method is the gold standard here: sample in a way
such that each subset of the total population of a given size has equal chance
of being selected. This includes, as a special case, that each individual has
an equal chance of being selected.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_random_sample](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_random_sample)

More complex sampling methods can be used since SRS is usually intractable
(you'd need to put every single person in your superpopulation into a lottery
by magic, else you'll bias toward those who like email surveys or actually
read their mail). In the event you use one of these you usually need a bias
mitigation strategy. For instance, you might just state something like "we
assume that receptiveness to email and dislike for Java are correlated". It's
then up to the reader to decide whether they trust your assumptions.

You might also do some other support studies which help to measure the size of
the bias your non-SRS sampling methodology induces and then correct for them.

------
jr203fj2fuf
Direct link:

[http://info.typesafe.com/acton/attachment/3608/f-004a/0/-/-/...](http://info.typesafe.com/acton/attachment/3608/f-004a/0/-/-/-/-/file.pdf)

~~~
xerophtye
You sir are a Gentleman and a Scholar

------
RyanZAG
Is it just me, or does this survey say basically nothing at all? Here's a
summary if you don't want to bother reading the PDF (and you probably
shouldn't bother):

    
    
      - Most use Java7, a few still use Java6
      - Mixed response on when exactly people will upgrade to j8
      - Most exciting feature in j8 is lambdas
      - 98% use Oracle JVM, 20% use dalvik (android)
      - App servers popularity is Tomcat, Jetty, Jboss, others
      - Mixed thoughts on Oracle getting security right
    

Seriously, what is the point of these questions...? You could get all these
answers with a google search.

~~~
fecak
It doesn't say much. This survey will likely be picked up by Java news sources
and read by Java devs, since there don't seem to be many surveys geared
towards Java devs these days. Maybe some of them will check out Scala.

Why would the company most behind Scala post a very positive survey about
Java? One would think that Scala's success probably relies on either replacing
or supplementing Java.

The only item that would be rather newsworthy would be the plans to adopt 8,
but as you mentioned the survey doesn't provide a clear answer.

My takeaway was that the most interesting new feature for people was lambdas,
and Scala already offers lambdas. This could be interpreted as "Survey
respondents are most excited about a Java feature that they could already have
if they used Scala".

------
jtheory
This reads a bit weirdly to me.

> Immediate Java 8 Migration Plans: 65% of Java developers have plans to
> upgrade to Java 8 within the next 24 months.

Er; "within the next 2 years" = "immediate"? That's a long-enough time scale
that a lot of the respondents may be thinking "well, all our enterprise stuff
is still on version 6, but surely my plans to overhaul everything won't take
more than two _years_ , will they?"

Also, 2800 is not actually a very high number, is it? Is that enough to be
representative of Java developer intentions, preferences, etc.?

~~~
daliusd
2800 is good number from statistical point of view IMHO. Google: sample size
determination.

~~~
taeric
I'm assuming that is a good number for a randomly sampled group. The self
selection nature of people that will be taking a typesafe survey gives me
doubts about whether it is good here.

~~~
brazzy
A larger number wouldn't neutralize the bias either.

~~~
taeric
Agreed.

------
thescrewdriver
The survey went out to largely a Scala audience (anyone signed up for the
Typesafe newsletter). As a developer using mostly Scala with some legacy Java
code to maintain I see various benefits to Java 8:

1) More enhancements to the core java libs that are more functional
programming friendly for use from Scala.

2) Legacy Java code less painful to maintain.

3) Java programmers suddenly stopped calling $FEATURE evil, since Java now
provides $FEATURE too (well for a small subset of Scala features anyway).

------
nogridbag
The new Date & Time API deserves more attention. Working with and persisting
dates has always been one of the bigger pain points when working with the JDK.
Just last week we encountered some strange bug in Grails where it won't
persist null values if using custom UserTypes under certain conditions (which
we need to persist Joda date types).

------
bagosm
I would like to have my hands on the actual data so I can divide results by
years of experience etc. This is too generic and doesn't server truly a
purpose other than create some hype about Java 8.

Now, what I would LOVE it would be a survey and thorough interview of the
public before Java 9 is built instead of after...

------
kapv89
As long as java doesn't support aliasing (ie: import com.tool.foo.Bar as
FooBar) , its gonna be _very_ hard to tackle the extreme verbosity java
results in.

~~~
twic
As a working Java programmer, I wouldn't have said that this was the main
source of verbosity in Java. Could you perhaps expand on how this results in
verbosity? Perhaps an example of some code in Java as it exists now, and a
less verbose version of the code in a hypothetical Java-with-aliasing.

~~~
thescrewdriver
I also don't see that as the primary source of verbosity in Java.

In Scala I can do:

import com.foo.bar.{Bar => FooBar}

But that's mostly just useful for dealing with cases where you have to deal
with classes with the same name in different packages.

The verbosity in Java comes from a lack of type inference, lack of first-class
properties (get/set naming convention doesn't count), and a whole basket of
other missing features. Another large contributor to Java verbosity is sadly
the the Java culture of over-engineering and resistance to change which has
built up over the years (the latter partly in response to the glacial
evolution of Java in the last decade).

------
sgt
Java 8 is very interesting to me, and although Lambdas get the most publicity,
I feel the concurrency updates and streams are the most important new
features.

~~~
fournm
I'm actually the most excited about JodaTime basically being baked into the
language. Date and Calendar are so, so bad that it would be hard for Instants
to not be an improvement.

~~~
frowaway001
Why do people keep saying this? It's blatantly wrong, as mentioned multiple
times by the JodaTime author itself.

~~~
fournm
Because one of the main authors behind JSR-310 happens to be the JodaTime
author and considers it to be inspired by JodaTime, even if it's different to
fix some flawed assumptions JodaTime made [1]. And as far as practical use
goes, they're very similar, since they draw upon the same concepts. I don't
see how it isn't a fair description, especially when you compare to how bad
Date/Calendar are right now.

[1] [http://blog.joda.org/2009/11/why-jsr-310-isn-joda-
time_4941....](http://blog.joda.org/2009/11/why-jsr-310-isn-joda-
time_4941.html)

~~~
frowaway001
If you read that link, you would realize that the author disagrees with you.

------
dschiptsov
You Know You Can Use Old Motor Oil to Fertilize Your Lawn?

