Java is a silly language!

If your sitting there thinking, “Where do they speak Java…?” then this post is probably not for you. Moving on:

I’m going to be “that guy” for a moment to say how silly of a programming language Java is. I didn’t say bad, I said silly.

I’ve just begun learning how to develop applications for Android. I got to the point where I needed to make an HTTP GET call to my server. If you dont know what that is, it’s as simple as going to a webpage and reading the response (albeit this is done programmatically). It’s a basic, common task that MANY developers do, especially if they implement web APIs. My server is a standard ruby on rails JSON api. My problem with my experience doing this in java is three-fold:

• For such a simple task, it required upwards of 20+ lines of code, depending on implementation. The same thing I do in 1 (with ruby)
• Java seems to be all about configuration. To the point where my requests were completely breaking and I was scratching my head for SIX hours until I discovered that I needed this line of code:

get.getParams().setParameter(CoreProtocolPNames.USE_EXPECT_CONTINUE, Boolean.FALSE);

How obscure is that shit?

• All this cost me a lot of time and messy code. I prefer that the language abstract me away from these implementation details.
• Don’t even get me started on serializing the data to objects

Basic things should not be that difficult. As a programmer it is always my goal to make things simpler. To anticipate how people will use the software. To be a step ahead. And reduce the amount of interaction to the minimum level required to get a task done