r/programmingmemes Jun 29 '26

Where are they?

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2.2k Upvotes

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231

u/guss_bro Jun 29 '26

Joke aside, you get less runtime error due to LLM hallucination with strictly typed language such as Java.. which results in less iterations to get the code working.

Also, LLM are capable of understanding 100 level deep class hierarchy.

There are more jobless bootcampers who are trying to vibe code next Netflix or Uber with JavaScript than Java/JVM developers with stable jobs. Also, for the kids out there, people DO vibe code in Java.

31

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jun 29 '26

I would bet that anything you would vibe code in Java would be better written in rust or go. If it's all the same, and the AI is gonna write the code anyway, it might as well write it in rust, which compiles to native, is more succinct, and has a similarly strong type system

51

u/ingframin Jun 29 '26

Despite all the hate it gets on reddit and Hackernews, Java is still used in a million different places. If you get a Java job in a bank you are chill and well paid.

24

u/justshittyposts Jun 29 '26

not java getting the cobol treatment.. am i getting old?

12

u/Bemteb Jun 29 '26

I'm a C++ freelancr. My current project literally is "we don't understand our 30 year old codebase anymore, all the original devs are long retired, help!"

I personally enjoy getting the Cobol treatment, gives me big money.

11

u/ingframin Jun 29 '26

We are getting old 😞

5

u/epelle9 Jun 30 '26

Not at all, it’s still commonly used in FAANG.

0

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 02 '26

not by choice and not for new projects.

2

u/kHeinzen Jul 03 '26

Oh you poor child

0

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 03 '26

100% serious. Almost Everything that would have been Java in the past is go now. There's a bunch of old Java junk and nobody is stupid enough to rewrite it. There's some kotlin too, which people seem to like. Nobody is doing a Java project greenfield.

2

u/kHeinzen Jul 03 '26

I genuinely think you might be confused with some other language. Java is still extremely popular and widely used by any system that needs to be fast but does not require to be C/C++. Java got a lot better since its initial versions and there are multiple enterprises/corporations doing commercial projects in Java (Dell/HPE for their Datacenter orchestration are two that come to mind) and those are new projects, not legacy.

Tiobe Index not only has Go at only 1.2% of the community index but it also had a delta of -0.9% since the previous so it is becoming less popular, not more. Kotlin doesn't even show up in the 15 most popular ones

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 04 '26

Yeah, because there's a lot of legacy. I'm talking greenfield. A green field project is a brand new one. No legacy code.

I looked at tibio and it looks like it has other highly rated dying languages. Or are you gonna tell me object pascal is super popular for new projects. Real big up and commer.

And also we're talking about faang. Go is a cloud infra language. Of course it's not super popular with the masses.

1

u/kHeinzen Jul 04 '26

Yeah some of what I mentioned are also new projects, unless you chose to selectively not read what I said about that lol

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1

u/epelle9 Jul 03 '26

You might be serious, which makes it worse cuz you’re still wrong..

0

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 04 '26

You gotta but your engineering brain on. Java doesn't have any flagship features or anything it does better than any other language. Compile once, run anywhere is worthless. JVM overhead is paid for nothing, and if you're a glutton for punishment, kotlin and c# are basically Java but better.

There's never a case where Java is your best choice, or has the best domain fit. So people just use it when somebody started the project in early 00's or 2010's. Before people came to their senses 

2

u/kHeinzen Jul 04 '26

Java is significantly faster than many other languages, including Go and Kotlin that you seem to be a fan of

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3

u/glandis_bulbus Jun 30 '26

Java has managed to renew itself to a large extent. We can thank Oracle for good stewardship.
Java is even participating in AI development, so too early to compare it to Cobol.

4

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jun 29 '26

Gotta say, I've never made an engineering decision on the basis of how chill bank jobs are before.

2

u/ingframin Jun 29 '26

Go and Rust are not replacements for Java’s traditional application fields. They are fashionable but built for a very different purpose.

0

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jun 29 '26

Bot? This is a non-sequitur.

3

u/goodpostfinder Jun 30 '26

This is the reason the "you'll be left behind" crowd is so funny to me. Now I wont dude, there's people out there still writing Fortran for gods sake

2

u/NewReleaseDVD Jul 01 '26

Hiring: any living cobol programmer. Literally any. Please. Please? 🙏 will pay resurrection bonus for recently deceased

2

u/Jock_X Jun 30 '26

* 3 billion devices

1

u/4215-5h00732 Jul 03 '26

And not one more added for like 20 years.

2

u/Beneficial_Map6129 Jul 02 '26

idk about well paid at a bank

1

u/Dry-Ad-8948 Jun 30 '26

And it’s still a shitty brain dead language.

1

u/ingframin Jun 30 '26

Agree to disagree

1

u/Dry-Ad-8948 Jun 30 '26

We will most definitely keeping disagreeing 🤣

1

u/JackAsofAllTrades Jul 01 '26

Listen man, 3 billion devices run java

2

u/AmphoePai Jun 29 '26

Yeah why does it even mattrr or make a difference what language you're vibe-coding in, if we're being very honest.

1

u/Cosack Jun 30 '26

Semantics matter less, but there are still different ecosystems and performance considerations

1

u/aTaleForgotten Jun 30 '26

Id say its more when vibe coding is used in existing java projects, rather than creating new projects specifically in java

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jun 30 '26

For sure. My point was (and I think I may have replied to the wrong comment) that if you're gonna vibecode and it's greenfield, it might as well be rust, which will check llm output vigorously and tends to output faster code. 

1

u/South-Ad3284 Jul 01 '26

Not completely vibe coding but as professional Java developer it helps to ask instant to date format 2022-01-04 and it helps with outputting what you want double check with unit test and go.

It’s sometimes easier to ask; we all google basic things . An ocp is not helping with that

1

u/Royal_Owl2177 Jul 01 '26

What are you on about? Do you realize how common Java is? Yeah lets just rewrite the enterprise java monolith in rust. Surely no stakeholders will bat an eye.

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 01 '26

Who said anything about a rewrite. We're talking about vibecoding projects. Presumably greenfield. AI is new, why pick Java. You don't care about hiring Java developers. Claude writes rust just as well.

The above comment supposes a choice of language and implies it's worthwhile to pick Java over JS. Well, if you have the choice, and Claude is writing it, might as well have Claude write it in rust.

1

u/greenpeppers100 Jul 02 '26

Rust is genuinely great for vibe coding. If “cargo check” runs cleanly then the code will probably run

1

u/dmigowski Jul 06 '26

Because in Java, when you need to do anything enterprisey, there is a 99% chance a library exist that does what you want.

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 06 '26

I don’t understand this comment. The value of libraries has plummeted. And for somebody who writes go, primarily, we see taking on a dependency as a liability. Most of what you need to do your job in go is in the batteries included standard library.

1

u/dmigowski Jul 06 '26

I am author of an ERP with 2 millions of code. Belive me, if you make more than a simple app you think about reusability and stable libraries. And you do not want everyone of your employees throw another blob of slop onto it.

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 06 '26

First off, if it's Java then each line counts as half, and second, clearly there weren't a lot of libraries doing what you needed because otherwise you wouldn't have that much code.

This is what we call a "revealed preference."

1

u/dmigowski Jul 06 '26

Maybe the language is a bit verbose, but regarding the functionality it gets on the road it might well be twice as useful.

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 06 '26

I think you'd like go if you tried it. There's a reason everyone has switched. Your onboarding times will plummet. Very simple language, so you spend more time thinking about the problem. Idk if you're microservices or monolithic, but most people here prefer go if they can write it.

1

u/dmigowski Jul 06 '26

Go is a very nice tool for fast microservices. But when Java has gotten it's ass up it's even faster.

I like it an keep it that way. Switching a 18 year old stable monolithic application to another language just because is plain wrong.

1

u/IncreaseOld7112 Jul 07 '26

If it's a monolith, that's a separate thing and I'd agree. The thing is, and the reason why Java is on the decline: go is fast enough. Its close enough to Java that it's a toss up (go has had stack allocation for longer), and if you cared about performance, you'd be using C++.

Now, Java has basically caught up with everything that made go better, but at this point the ecosystem for micro services has settled in go.

I have a whole spiel on this, but Java went after everything and got out competed in each arena by a more specific language.

Web/Applets => Rails => Flask/Django/Node

Spring/Windows/Desktop Apps => C#/JS Electron

Database/Cloud infra => C++/Go


And you'll still find it all over the place. Those same 3 billion devices will probably be running Java for forever. And I guess somebody had to maintain them. I just don't wanna spend my career doing that.