> Hard as it may be to imagine, there was a time when Java was brand new and exciting. Long before it became the vast clunky back-end leviathan it is today, it was going to be the ubiquitous graphical platform that would be used on everything from cell phones to supercomputers: write once, run anywhere.
As someone who started their software career at Java version 8, I wouldn't say the trend in Java has been to become more clunky.
If we separate frameworks from the core libraries of Java, its more modular, has better functionality with things like Strings, Maps, Lists, Switch statements, Resource (file, http) accessing etc.etc.
For frameworks we have Spring Boot, which can be as clunky or as thin as you want for a backend.
For IC cards, and small embedded systems, I can still do that in the newer versions of Java just with a smaller set of libraries.
Maybe the author is nostalgic for a time (which I didn't experience - was busy learning how to walk), but Java can do all the things JDK version 1 can, and so much more. No?
Was such a great promise. I remember visiting PCExpo in the late 90's and Sun's booth had a Java demo running on three machines: Linux x86, Windows X86 and Solaris Sparc (OSX wasn't even revealed yet). You could run a few demos you selected from a menu one of which was a 3D ship with accelerated OpenGL which really thrilled me - cross platform everything, even CAD and gaming. Amazing! The future is finally here.
And it never happened. Bummer. Instead we got a badly hacked up hypertext viewer with various VM's duck taped to the sides.
I don't think the comparison is new Java to old Java, I think it's Java vs. it's competitors.
When Java was new, scripting/dynamic languages hadn't matured enough to be true competitors so you were left with C/C++, Delphi and the like. In that landscape, Java is beyond exciting.
Nowadays there are so many alternatives that didn't exist then. And it's not debatable that many of those languages (Dart, C#, Typescript, Kotlin) move faster when it comes to language features. Whether you want/need them is subjective, sure. But back in the day Java was that hot, fast moving language.
As someone who started their software career at Java version 8, I wouldn't say the trend in Java has been to become more clunky.
If we separate frameworks from the core libraries of Java, its more modular, has better functionality with things like Strings, Maps, Lists, Switch statements, Resource (file, http) accessing etc.etc.
For frameworks we have Spring Boot, which can be as clunky or as thin as you want for a backend.
For IC cards, and small embedded systems, I can still do that in the newer versions of Java just with a smaller set of libraries.
Maybe the author is nostalgic for a time (which I didn't experience - was busy learning how to walk), but Java can do all the things JDK version 1 can, and so much more. No?