From: Patrick Hurley <phurley@...>
Date: 2005-03-30T00:08:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Java for Rubyists

On Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:55:08 +0900, Lyndon Samson
<lyndon.samson@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'll never get this attitude, why is programming in a more powerful
> language almost more enjoyable than in a less powerful language?

I cannot claim to speak for the writer, but I will say that some
languages are just more fun than others -- and this is not entirely
limited to "higher level" verses "lower level" languages. For me it
often maps to using a language well suited to the task. Although there
is little call for it today, I still remember the pure pleasure of
writing well tuned assembly code. I experienced pleasure writing well
tuned server code in C and C++.

Of course that all having been said, for whet is Java well suited? It
always feels like a dynamic language fighting its static typing to me.
It has some wonderful dynamic features that I always miss when using
C++ (dynamic class loading, reflection, etc), but the static type
checking seems to bog them down in syntax. In addition the majority of
Java frameworks seem to lean very heavy on configuration files (not
that externalizing options are a bad thing) to compensate for the lack
of meta data -- hopefully Java 1.5's meta data system will help in
this.

My $0.02, worth exactly what you paid for it 
Patrick