Comment by pregnenolone
5 days ago
If we ignore the fact that value types likely won’t ship before we have flying cars, Java has evolved greatly. I really like how they’ve solved concurrency, but I dislike how they’ve handled modules but this a minor issue.
The main problem with Java has always been its build tools. They’ve consistently been bad and continue to be. Even today, creating a bundled application with a stripped down JDK with jlink and jpackage is incredibly painful. You’ll need extensive knowledge of the Java CLI, modules, build tool plugins, or tools like Mill which simplify using jlink and jpackage, but even then it remains complex and frequently fails. In reality it should be as simple as something like "java package". Even these days, I frequently see Java developers presenting their desktop apps on Reddit and if you look at how they deploy them, it's often a fat JAR because they struggle to use jlink and jpackage effectively. Ironically, even generateing a fat JAR can be challenging.
As someone who has spent over two decades developing desktop applications including witnessing the shift to horrendous Electron firsthand I can tell you that this was a primary reason Java basically vanished from being so prevalent on desktops. Inexperienced developers often struggled to deploy even simple Java applications, grappling with either runtime incompatibilities (Ironically, developers are somewhat reintroducing the same problem with WebView-based applications) or having to tell their users how to launch a Java app. While some claim desktop apps are dead – which is nonsense – the same applies to CLI applications. CLI apps remain prevalent, primarily written in native languages or Golang, sometimes even Node or one of its derivatives. Rarely Java for the reasons I just mentioned and don't get me started with Graal Native. If someone decides to write a simple trivial CLI app in Golang, they'll simply build it with a single command and be done with it. With Graal Native, you'll have to go through using the tracing agent, and if you're lucky you'll have a fat native executable after minutes of compile time. Forget Graal for a minute though. Java would already go a long way if bundling your application with a stripped down JDK (jlink) was as easy as typing in a single command without having to deal with complicated Maven or Gradle plugins.
TIL Mill, I've been in build hell trying to package a javafx GUI gradle project that depends on a non-module-ified lib (usb4java, long story, no I can't use anything else). Beryx/badass failed entirely, was able to get something working with Gradle doing jlink and manual CLI jpackage ...
But tbh the whole experience makes me distrust the Java ecosystem if you're supporting anything that is slightly out of the community's view or priorities. Even JavaFX shows very patchy support for certain very standard UI concepts, and the situation with packaging is bad as you say.
Anyway, is mill worth switching away from Gradle? (Does mill integrate at all with idea?)
Mill does work with idea (via the build server protocol), and the ideas behind it are very sound (a build tool is basically a function calling other functions - on which they depend. You just want to parallelize their running and cache their results.
But it does have a learning curve and you may sometimes end up having strange error messages. (As an implementation, it's basically Scala macros turning normal looking scala functions into a static task graph). It is getting better and better support for mainstream java build setups, and it's possibly the best tool for something very custom. In between the two extremes, you may or may not have a better time with Gradle/Maven.
> Anyway, is mill worth switching away from Gradle?
Hard to say because I don't know how someone without Scala experience would fare with Mill. Then again, I think anything is better than Gradle. Really, anything. I even think I would do everything by hand rather than using Gradle. Also the creator of Mill is a great guy. Rest assured, if something's confusing or not working he's gonna help you out or fix it if necessary.
I feel like Gradle is only relevant for Android. All other projects are fine with Maven (and I like a lot that Maven doesn't allow to code in the build config, any complex logic should be extracted to a custom build plugin, using real code. I just have PTSD after some build.gradle monstrosities).
It's just that Maven doesn't have a good core abstraction and it is not a reliable build system. Like even with base plugins, let alone with additional ones you can't be sure that a build actually picked up every change, you often have to do a double take and do a clean install instead to get some stale files cleared. This should never happen in a build tool and every other feature is secondary to this error.
That's why I defaulted to Gradle, which has its own idiocities (like tending to break the syntax on every second major version, but it's much better with the kotlin DSL), which at least 100% sound.
For more experimental/hobby projects I choose mill though.
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