Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

To me Stack Overflow is the new "Experts Exchange"

I love Java and I love the Java ecosystem. Stack Exchange serves the Java ecosystem very poorly however.

A lot of the frustration people have with Java is that they try to learn it from a task-oriented perspective, and that really gets you in trouble if you work with Spring or Maven, particularly on a big team. If your first experience is with a 40-module Maven project that is all SNAPSHOT releases, it takes two hours to do a complete build, and there are just two people who understand maven vs 23 developers who get their answers a problem at a time from StackOverflow and who copy each others' bad solutions while adding more problems, of course you hate Maven.

In the case of Maven the documentation sux and you need to read the source code and not be afraid to write plug-ins, but Spring is not so mysterious if you take your tablet to the gym and read the manual cover to cover a few times.

There is no language that favors holistic thinking and punishes "task-oriented" thinking more than Java. For instance, when most developers have to deal with logging it's because things have gotten horribly tangled up with slf4j and commons-logging. Once more, the situation is pretty simple if you understand the big picture, but from a task oriented perspective you're just stumbling in the dark.



Consider applying for YC's Winter 2026 batch! Applications are open till Nov 10

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: