Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!newsfeed.hal-mli.net!feeder1.hal-mli.net!news.linkpendium.com!news.linkpendium.com!newsfeeds.ihug.co.nz!lust.ihug.co.nz!ihug.co.nz!not-for-mail From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: java.lang vs java.util Followup-To: comp.lang.java.programmer Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 02:32:56 +0000 (UTC) Organization: Geek Central Lines: 25 Message-ID: References: NNTP-Posting-Host: 118-92-95-246.dsl.dyn.ihug.co.nz Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8Bit X-Trace: lust.ihug.co.nz 1304562776 27577 118.92.95.246 (5 May 2011 02:32:56 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@ihug.co.nz NNTP-Posting-Date: Thu, 5 May 2011 02:32:56 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: Emacs 23 Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:3533 In message , Patricia Shanahan wrote: > You will never get fluent in Java if you think Python code is a > reasonable specification for your Java code. I did C++ and TCL before I did Python. I did Perl and Java before that. And C before that. I am as fluent in Java as I want to be—the main learning curve right now is the Android APIs. The day I can rely on most Android devices to have a Python implementation built-in, guess what I’ll be doing... > I do not think that you will be happy with Java if your main criterion > for good code is short code. My criterion is not short code, but MAINTAINABLE code. Data-driven code is best: then you can usually make changes just to data tables, with minimal need to change any actual code. This needs a language that can easily construct elaborate data structures, preferably with a functional notation. That Python example I posted illustrates this: it needs to pull out a long list of fields from one table. But any change to that list of fields only needs to be made in one place; all the rest of the code for constructing the query and formatting the output will automatically adjust to that.