I see where you're coming from, but no matter how many null pointer exceptions there are in Java code, you're almost always protected from actually wrecking your system in an unrecoverable way; usually the program will just crash, and even provide a relatively helpful error message. The JVM is effectively a safety net, albeit an imperfect one. Whereas in C++, the closest thing you have to a safety net, i.e. something to guarantee that invalid memory usage crashes your program rather than corrupting its own or another process's memory, is segfaults, which are merely a nicety provided by common hardware, not required by the language or provided by the compiler. Even then, with modern compiler implementations, undefined behavior can cause an effectively unlimited amount of "bad stuff" even on hardware that supports segfaults.
Additionally, most languages with managed runtimes that existed when Java was introduced didn't actually have a static type system. In particular, Perl was very popular, and its type system is...uh...well, let's just say it gives JavaScript some serious competition.
That said, despite this grain of truth in the statement, I think the perception that Java is comparatively robust is primarily due to Java's intense marketing (particularly in its early years), which strongly pushed the idea that Java is an "enterprise" language, whatever that means.
This is a really good post about why C is so difficult to seriously consider replacing, or even to avoid by using a different language for certain projects: https://faultlore.com/blah/c-isnt-a-language/
Oof, slow compile times to target, of all things, the JVM? Implicit methods? Some(null)? Function call syntax where the difference between a tuple argument and a sequence of non-tuple arguments can be determined by whether or not there's a space before the parentheses?
There are definitely some major issues with Scala.
I was a professional C++ developer for several years, and came to the conclusion that any professional C++ developers who don't acknowledge its flaws have a form of Stockholm Syndrome.
In both cases, Go and Python, the operator will assign a variable a value and also use it as an expression.
That is absolutely not true. foo := <expr> is a statement in Go, full stop. Just try something trivial like assigning to the output of :=: https://go.dev/play/p/nPINGc7LO8B
It's true that if and for let you use := but don't let you use var, but you still can't use the result of the assignment directly. So for instance you need if foo := <expr>; foo { ... } rather than just if foo := <expr> { ... }.
I was curious about the Python connection because multiple comments mentioned it, but I've worked on multiple Python projects over the past dozen-ish years and never seen that operator.
Turns out it was introduced in 3.8, released in 2019, so it was much too late to inspire Go, and most of the projects I've worked on were written to target an earlier Python version. It also has a substantially different meaning than in Go.
I don't know if there's an "official" rationale for the Go syntax, but := is a fairly common (but not ubiquitous) math notation meaning "define the thing on the left to be equal to the expression on the right", i.e. to distinguish it from the other use of =, i.e. "the expression on the left must be equal to the expression on the right." Go's usage matches this mathematical meaning of introducing a new variable definition pretty well.
This "full on rage essay" is nine sentences, including the tl;dr and the sentence fragments. There's really not a big difference between telling your coworkers a story like this and posting about it on social media.
I've met people with C++ Stockholm Syndrome, and I think their trajectory is different. There's no asymptotic approach toward zero; their appreciation just grows or stays steady, even decades into their career.
How is await like comefrom, any more than threading is like comefrom? The variable context is preserved and you have no control over what is executed before the await returns.
I see where you're coming from, but no matter how many null pointer exceptions there are in Java code, you're almost always protected from actually wrecking your system in an unrecoverable way; usually the program will just crash, and even provide a relatively helpful error message. The JVM is effectively a safety net, albeit an imperfect one. Whereas in C++, the closest thing you have to a safety net, i.e. something to guarantee that invalid memory usage crashes your program rather than corrupting its own or another process's memory, is segfaults, which are merely a nicety provided by common hardware, not required by the language or provided by the compiler. Even then, with modern compiler implementations, undefined behavior can cause an effectively unlimited amount of "bad stuff" even on hardware that supports segfaults.
Additionally, most languages with managed runtimes that existed when Java was introduced didn't actually have a static type system. In particular, Perl was very popular, and its type system is...uh...well, let's just say it gives JavaScript some serious competition.
That said, despite this grain of truth in the statement, I think the perception that Java is comparatively robust is primarily due to Java's intense marketing (particularly in its early years), which strongly pushed the idea that Java is an "enterprise" language, whatever that means.