Without Java we wouldn't have Minecraft which is THE indie game which has revolutionized indie business as we know it.

But I cant' get it to fucking run, so fuck Java!

Universities don't teach people to use Java well... They teach them mostly their interpretation of the theories behind writing good software and some semi-correct practices and it's up to the students to put that knowledge into practice, which I've heard doesn't happen very often. I have heard stories of university graduates writing very stupid code. E.g. referencing GET/POST variables by numeric index into a string dictionary whose order is undefined, and overlooking and then fighting the need to implement server-side security mechanisms (on more than one occasion)... And this was after years of employment in the field.

If you ask me, neither colleges nor universities can make you a good programmer. They can teach you the theories or practices, but it's up to the individual to actually filter out the good from the bad and use it effectively. I've heard a few examples of older programmers complaining about the "Java generation". I don't think that Java is necessarily the problem, but I do think that it's naive to focus on teaching Java to students. Learning a new language is easy, or at least it better be if you plan to make a career out of this. Instead of teaching them a language that holds their hand, they should throw them to the wolves and teach them C++ with GCC from the command line. If they can't succeed in that environment then they shouldn't graduate, IMHO. The transition from C++ to Java is much easier than the other way around, so there's no reason it should be a problem for anyone. (And no, don't waste your breath saying that we should all be taught to program in assembly ... That's not the same thing and you know it )

Please verify the orientation of your encyclopedia. You may be holding it upside-down. Objects are implicitly passed by reference in Java (there is no other option), which is equivalent to passing a pointer, which is very efficient. Aside from that, there's a very miniscule penalty each time you dereference an object member, but it's completely negligible and will not drastically affect the performance of your application.

What's wrong with this:

bamccaig@castopulence:~$ javac -Xlint Test.java
bamccaig@castopulence:~$ java Test
The value of x is '0.0'.
bamccaig@castopulence:~$ 

I think it's just all down to doing it the proper way.

in float x=0, you're widening which is just an implicit cast as it's fine, but you'd add the explicit cast just because, maybe to show you haven't made a daft mistake in type or value.

If you have 'float x=0.0' that would fail because floating point numbers are double not float so the compiler thinks you're trying to narrow. I guess (float)0.0 and 0.0f are both just explicit casts and equal, just convention makes you use 0.0f as it's a literal, but there's nothing wrong with (float)0.0

[edit]
Indeed, if you are using Eclipse and enter 'float a=0.0;' the automatic solution to cast it changes it to (float)0.0 and not 0.0f.

There's no reason to think that is the case. The compiler should turn that into identical byte-code (i.e., no run-time conversation is needed).

I think he meant typing 0.1f is faster than (float)0.1

Yes I completely agree with this. In my college programming class (in Java) we did not even cover what a package is or why they exist :O . We also did not cover any version control. If students are not even aware of compilers, linkers, version control, and in Java, packages, then how are they expected to succeed in the field just knowing:

JButton myButton = new JButton("I'm a Java Programmer!!!");

Because really the jist of what we covered were controls and action listeners.

I really agree with this. I learned C++ on my own and then had my Java course. I never read a single page of the proposed Java book and finished the course with a perfect 100.0 . I must say, understanding pointers from C++ made it so easy when I transitioned to Java. I understood WHY ArrayLists<T> cannot use primitive types, and HOW Java, as my teacher puts it "magically" does things like memory management and polymorphism. Understanding function pointers and reference counted pointers from C++ made these concepts very easy to understand.

Therefore, even though a student may never need to use C++ in their every day work, if it is taught well, it makes every other language such as PHP, C#, Java etc very easy to learn. In real life I believe it is more of an asset to understand programming at a fairly low level in order to enable you to easily pick up any other language you are faced with because the reality is, you cannot just go job hunting for only Java Programmer positions, I fully expect my career as a programmer to encompass a variety of languages. The fundamental concepts I learned with C++ however will make learning new languages easier.

I should however note that in my Java Programming course, around 20% failed the course and around 40% were between 60 and 70 (60 is the passing grade in my part of Canada). Therefore I'm sure the argument most teachers would have is that they want students to pass. However, I do not think it is doing them a favor in the real world of programming. In the course I was in, with its difficulty, I'd say any grade below 90 was a failure to me.

Obviously you're referring to enterprise editions earlier than version 6. JSF 2.0 + JPA 2.0 + EJB 3.1 + CDI 1.0 on GlassFish 3.1.1 is an excellent platform for building web apps that scale. Boilerplate code is almost non-existent. This version of the EE spec makes third party frameworks such as Spring and Struts irrelevant. I would agree that J2EE (i.e. 1.4 and earlier) were for big stuffy corporations with more money than sense. Java EE 5 was somewhere in the middle. Java EE 6 is made for the public web.

JSF 2.0 is leagues ahead of any ASP.NET MVC crap that Microsoft has released.

Compare the time spent installing Visual Studio 2010 (Professional or Premium) vs. JDK7 + NetBeans 7.0.1. Visual Studio is much slower.

I guess that's just down to your taste and perhaps the type of projects you undertake. The subset of Java EE 6 I'm using is a very nice fit for my project. I had started with php, but it got too messy too quickly.

I'll admit, the learning curve for JSF 2.0 (even assuming you have a good working knowledge of Java, EJB 3.1 and JPA 2.0) is much steeper than that of PHP. But the problem with PHP is you inevitably need a framework to manage the complexity and cross-cutting concerns of larger web applications, whether that be your own framework or someone else's.

I agree. It's hard to find a decent sized JSF2 community outside stackoverflow. My guess is that, just like EJB 3.x, JSF 2.0 suffers from the bad reputation earned by the previous version, 1.1. Although 2.0 is an evolution rather than a revolution, it's a pretty damn big step up, especially the AJAX support. Another thing to consider is that JSF 2.0 isn't available to organizations until they upgrade their application servers to the Java EE 6 compliant versions. As usual, the industry drags its heels when it comes to implementing the latest EE version.

We had to start programming in Java and first had to compile and run everything from the command line.

They haven't taught us proper programming yet (I think they will though), but the teachers (or some of them...) do assume that we are smart enough not to write shit code. Just making the program work does not guarantee a good score.

Oh and we have also been taught a little bit of assembly.

Except MOST people don't, and won't.

Except that doesn't happen. There are a lot of completely unqualified people getting jobs in IT. Probably because the people doing the hiring are just as unqualified.

Are you trolling? I thought the point of university was to educate, and produce productive individuals. Or is it really that the only reason to go to university is if you want to become a professor, or research theorist?

Always.

Its purpose is to provide a strong theoretical basis, and to broaden the mind. Produce productive individuals? Are you trolling?