Re: Joy of this, Joy of that

On Tue, 25 Nov 2024, rbowman wrote:

On Mon, 25 Nov 2024 23:21:21 +0100, D wrote:
>

One of my customers has an in house developed, huge, java program. They
have been developing it, based on a ph.d. thesis for the last 10 years,
and they also tried to shun libraries but have written a lot of
functionality from scratch.
>
I almost started to work there 7 years ago, but that would have been too
early. It is absolutely fascinating how much they achieved in the past 7
years and how much their program has matured.

>
Those things tend to grow. There is a small town that is handled by the
county sheriffs department but it's about 50 miles from the dispatch
station. The original Java app allowed the substation to have some idea
what was going on in town, but there was no interaction. It was simple to
set up and to update.  Over the years it grew into a fully functional
interface with parts being reused to build an Android app.
>
I did a few minor enhancements over the years for GIS related
functionality with great care since I am not a competent Java programmer.
I was interested in Java in the late '90s. In my edition of 'Java in a
Nutshell' it still fit in a nutshell rather than a whole damn walnut tree.
>
My first disillusionment came when Swing was added on top of AWT. "your
app runs like a herniated sloth? You need a bigger, faster machine!"
>
I have the media for Visual J++. It showed promise before it was
kneecapped by Sun. imho C# is Java done right.
>

Yes, I asked the CTO if he would have chosen Java today, and he said no. But now they have 10 years of work in java, so there is little point to switch to something else, since Java works well for them.
I imagine that the fact that they keep external library dependencies to a minimum makes it easier for them, than if they had a lot of dependencies on third party libraries.
I wonder if rust would be a good option today? The software is purely backend software. All the GUI parts are just html + some dynamic stuff.