Why I Hate Java (and Yes, This Is Completely Biased)

Disclaimer: No hate on Java fans. Read at your own risk. I admire James Gosling. He is a true genius. Especially, he was in AWS when I was still working there.

I don’t hate Java because it’s bad… I hate it because it’s stuck in a time warp. Slow. Bloated. Legacy products that are basically unmanageable.

Time Travel in the Wrong Direction 

Java had its moment back when C and C++ ruled the world, and there weren’t any decent cross-platform solutions. Back then, yes, Java was a miracle. But these days? We’ve got Docker, Go, Rust, Python… basically everything that makes building software not feel like a medieval torture ritual.

Performance? What’s That? 

Performance? C or C++. Microservices? Go or Rust. Simple scripting? Python. JVM? Slow. Always slow.

Dependency management is a nightmare. Gradle or Maven? Learning them is basically learning a new language… just with more crying. Meanwhile, Go integrates nicely with Git, and Python has pip. Easy-peasy.

It's a Cult 

And don’t get me started on the cult-like obsession with OOP. Java developers worship Spring Boot, Lombok, and Log4j like they’re magical spells. If your language doesn’t come with a decent standard library, maybe it’s not worth the pain. Lombok annotations? They magically generate code that nobody can read. Javax injections? Zero readability. Debugging? Good luck.

Unit testing in Java? A tragedy. Mockito mocks everything until you’re basically testing the concept of mocking itself. Why even bother?

And finally, the Java bro mindset. These people have rules for writing rules. “List, grasshopper, thou shalt do this, then that…” It’s like coding with a sensei who never graduated from the 90s.

In short: Java had its day. But now it’s the slow kid in the back of the classroom that refuses to graduate.

The “We’ve Always Done It This Way” Trap

And let’s be honest—some Java defenders are stuck in the “we’ve always done it this way” mindset. Legacy frameworks, endless boilerplate, and mystical annotations survive because… well, that’s just how it’s always been. These will all soon be replaced by Gen AI.

To quote Grace Hopper: "The most dangerous phrase in the language is 'We’ve always done it this way.'"

Java may have been great in its time, but clinging to it out of habit is like insisting on using a flip phone in the era of smartphones. Nostalgic? Sure. Practical? Not so much.

Anyway, who am I to judge? There are still a ton of talented people building amazing things in Java. I’m just a dude who still thinks go-to is not that bad. But please, don’t build a new service in Java unless you absolutely have to.