Java is a great virtual machine, a good collection of open source libraries, an ok language, and a nightmare collection of best practices and people who enforce them.

I don't have a beef with the language, it is the developers who have never programmed in another language and still think that FactoryBuilderImpls are a good idea. They have never ventured outside of an IDE, but insist that Python isn't a real programming language. I can program Java but I never want to program with "Java developers" if I can help it.

That in a nutshell is why I said Java is a horrible language.

That said, people with a strong preference for a particular language are comparable to religious fanatics. A good engineer doesn't let language preference and emotional attachment to something get in the way of building something better.

If learning something else is too uncomfortable or seems unecessary to you then you are no better than a religious person.

btw, before I get downvoted the "religious person" analogy was what a senior developer said of me when I was a .NET guy a long time ago.

note: the same applies to the religious sects who worship libraries and frameworks (Mostly front-end Javscript web developers)

Your message could still be effective (or even more effective) without putting down "religious people".

He said religious fanatics who are also people but a niche inside a religion. What is wrong with that as it rings through? Both defend something mostly without bases with extreme vigor and energy.

Yes! I program PHP because I feel it fills a spiritual void for me.

I'm a Zend-Buddhist.

Cannot edit the post for some reason, but sleepy this morning and not native English ; rings true of course.

There's certainly no shortage of crummy developers layering on useless abstractions for no reason other than dogma. Don't worry, soon all those young and thoughtless developers will be coding in nothing but JavaScript, and the crufty Java die-hards will be pumping prime contracts to migrate old Java business engines well into retirement.

Java is incredibly verbose and does not support many modern paradigms very well (see Rx and streams). For that sort of OOP language, C# is far better. The JVM is excellent, however.