this post was submitted on 25 Aug 2023
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The future of back-end development (lemm.ee)
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/programming
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What are your opinions on the future of back-end web development? Is the Java ecosystem going to wither away as more modern and better solutions are emerging and maturing?

If so, which language/framework and/or programming paradigm do you think will become the new dominant player and how soon?

Personally I would love to see Rust becoming a new standard, it's a pleasure to write and has a rapidly growing ecosystem, I don't think it's far away from overtaking Java. The biggest hurdle imo is big corporations taking a pretty big risk by choosing a relatively new language that's harder to learn compared to what has been the standard for decades.

Playing it safe means you minimize surprises and have a very large amount of people that are already experts in the language.

Taking the risk will definitely improve a lot of things given that you find enough people that know or are willing to learn Rust, but it also means that you're trading off Java flaws with Rust flaws. That's the case however with every big change, and Java flaws are a good enough reason to make a big change.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve been using ktor in a personal project and it’s been a joy; all the familiarity of Spring but with Kotlin first.

Also, I know that Amazon has started to switch some projects to Kotlin, since they’re such a large Java shop: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/opensource/adopting-kotlin-at-prime-video-for-higher-developer-satisfaction-and-less-code/

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Amazon has been adopting a lot of languages in recent years, including writing services in Rust and C# to my knowledge. It's cool seeing them branch away from Java, although I know that internally they use their own flavor of Java (Corretto).

[–] lysdexic 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I can tell you without any shred of doubt that Amazon still standardizes on Java-based frameworks, including Spring, and has absolutely no plans to switch. Each Amazon team is able to pick its own tech stack, but the ones that do not use Java or a JDK-based stack are extremely rare, and more than not are working on specialized applications such as mobile development.

[–] sirdorius 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can also tell you without any shred of doubt, that there are many Amazon teams that absolutely hate Java and would rather build their stack on top of anything else (except PHP, which is rightfully prohibited company wide)

[–] lysdexic 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I can also tell you without any shred of doubt, that there are many Amazon teams that absolutely hate Java

Irrelevant. What matters is what the company uses, not what some guy's personal taste.

Amazon standardizes on Java. There is no way around this fact.

[–] sirdorius 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, some "guy's" personal taste matters, because if employees hate it, over time they will stop using it. When you get paged at 4AM because some NPE popped up in prod that could be avoided by any sane language you will think twice on the next stack you build. And since when does popularity equal quality?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is branching away from Java, even if it still uses it primarily. Unusually, off the top of my head, I happen to know more .NET developers working there than Java developers, and interestingly they develop one of the services on AWS. I know that there are significantly more Java developers, but I don't think we are in disagreement that there are projects that don't use Java.

[–] lysdexic 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is branching away from Java, even if it still uses it primarily.

I'm sorry to tell you, but I assure you it is not. Some small subset of teams uses non-java tech stacks but that's because they have very particular requirements, such as being android apps or running on Linux devices. The bulk of the company heavily standardized on Java and has no plans to ever move away from it.

Unusually, off the top of my head, I happen to know more .NET developers working there than Java developers, and interestingly they develop one of the services on AWS.

First of all AWS is not Amazon.

Secondly, I can tell you for a fact that C# is one of the rarest tech stacks at Amazon. Even Amazon's internal build system does not support it.

I'm afraid you're talking about stuff you know close to nothing about.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’m sorry to tell you, but I assure you it is not.

I'm sorry to tell you, but I assure you it is. Like I said, we both agree that Java is the predominant language, but at Amazon there are services written in Java, TypeScript, C#, and Rust to name a few.

First of all AWS is not Amazon.

First of all, AWS stands for "Amazon Web Services". It's not Amazon? Does Amazon not employ people to work on it? Perhaps you're thinking of amazon.com?

Secondly, I can tell you for a fact that C# is one of the rarest tech stacks at Amazon. Even Amazon’s internal build system does not support it.

Amazon's country-named build system supports building many different languages, including C++, Java, Rust, and yes, teams have even managed to make it work for C# projects. It isn't a Java build system, it's a multi-language build system.

I’m afraid you’re talking about stuff you know close to nothing about.

I find it funny how every single comment you post includes a personal attack. Since you seem incapable of backing up your own points with anything but insults, you can be the first person on my block list.

[–] sirdorius 2 points 1 year ago

lysdexic keeps talking about Amazon but has no clue how it works. Take it from someone who recently worked in AWS. You are right in all your points.