The teacher may have asked to find pro and contras of Java, and he may have already found all the good points

IMO containers are almost fixed and are a bit similar to C++ STL now

huh? I've used it quite a bit

try {
  blah;
} catch (Exception e) {
  e.printStackTrace();
} finally{
  bleh;
}

On a sidenote:
Have a look at Titan Attakcs. Titan Attacks is a great (Java) game, selling well, playing better and they have quite some other goodies on their page as well.

After playing around a bit with the current java gaming libs, I must say that I am really impressed.

Ooh! Ooh! I know a great reason! They force us to use it in our Algorithms course.

A lot of the hastle with this was fixed with the introduction of autoboxing in Java 1.5.

So, before java 1.5, you would have to do this:

int i = 5;
Integer j = new Integer(10);
i = j.valueOf();

From 1.5 and beyond, you can do this instead:

int i = 5;
Integer j = 10;
i = j;

Additionally, just for those who haven't used java since 1.4, they have added some other "nice" features, such as a for-each loop mechanism, support for variable argument functions, language-level support for enumerations, static imports (for better or for worse), as well as a several additional classes ( such as java.util.concurrent.locks.* for locking specific "chunks" of code instead of entire methods).

Of those atomic primitives are my favorites because they just make concurrent programming so much simpler. No need for any locks or mutexes or synchronized functions/blocks

Hmm, generics can only be objects but it does avoid blind casting and casting exceptions i suppose.

I remembered 1 last thing about java that i found annoying. There's System.out.println but no System.in.readline afaik. Would have to instantiated buffered reader etc. every time.

http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/java/lang/ref/package-summary.html

Marcello

You shouldn't do that anyway.

I have nothing against Java, but I have something against extremist groups being either Java haters or Java lovers without any valid ground of reasoning. It has been said before, and I'll repeat it whole-heartedly: the right tool for the right job. Java has its applications, and if they fit your requirements, go with it. If not, look for something different that suits you better.

Sorta skipped most of this thread.. but:

To the people who claim Java is slow, you obviously dont know the difference between a language and the thing that executes it. The JVM you happen to use might suck, but thats not really Java's fault. C used to be slow too..

Anyway my main complaints about Java are

• Once you get into the Java mentality of design its extremely easy to over-engineer everything. Like ML said you end up having or using classes that abstract away virtually nothing until you have a lot of structure without a lot of purpose.

  
  

• Garbage collection. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it but its worth complaining about. When you really want to get rid of some memory the best you can do is Runtime.gc() or whatever the call is and pray to god the JVM will run the garbage collector for you. Sometimes praying just doesnt cut it.

  
  

• The classpath swapped dll hell for basically configuration hell. If you accidentally put the wrong version of a jar in the front of your classpath you will have all sorts of wierd problems that take a good while to debug. 9/10 of all my problems in Java are classpath related.

  
  

• Anonymous inner classes are the poor man's lambda. Ive heard people say lambda are a poor man's anonymous inner classes too, but I think thats malarky. When you want to pass around a function wouldn't you rather do this

scheme:
(some_function (lambda (arg1) (printf arg1)) (list 1 2 3))
or ruby:
some_function( lambda{|x| puts x}, [1,2,3] )

Instead of this:

list = new List();
list.add( new Integer( 1 ) );
list.add( new Integer( 2 ) );
list.add( new Integer( 3 ) );
some_function( new Lambda0(){
      public void execute( Object o ){
            System.out.println( o.toString() );
      }, list );

Maybe the example isnt long enough to be really dramatic but anonymous inner classes just dont cut it, IMO.

Heh, I've heard about that. Apparently they hate 'babying the newbies' or something and they'll eject people that do.

Yeah; this has ahppened to me all the time.

Though again; no fault of the language just it's particular implementation.

Reason to hate java:

A lot of people go on about how good it is, but i don't see anythign special. Normal yes, but not special, therefore i hate it in order to sustain the natural balance between the computer languages

Plus if you want a high level langue, you may as well have the most capable.

C can use fortran's or pascal's .oes, yet neither fortran nor pascal can use c's .oes, therefore C is more elite. Plus fortran and pascal have their crucial libraries written in C (in modern times atleast).

But assembler is not cross-platform, so it's too low-level to count. Java is another language that at some level is "derived" from c, so is c++ so is C# (even if self-hosted they are still derived languages, think about it).

So hate it to be an elitest prick, justifying it on the fact that there is this langauge called C and it is more cool.

(C is an exception to the natural order rule, as it is at the top of the food chain as explained above).

C is holier than thou, java. So taketh the backseat that thou deserveth and feel thy hate! (or whatever)

From an end-user perspective, I beg to differ. I mean it, I've never seen a Java-based GUI application that ran at something approaching a decent speed, on any computer I've ran them on.