Kevin Bourrillion wants to get the word out: Google Collections is dead, long live Guava! Guava is a proper superset of Google Collections, so the passing of the latter is cause to rejoice, not mourn.
I've only scratched the surface of Guava in my own work on Seat Yourself, but I can tell already that it makes large parts of our "common" code unnecessary. Being able to replace your own code with a well-tested open source library is a wonderful thing, like getting someone else to mow the lawn for free.
In what feels to me like a dark time, as big companies privately negotiate the fate of Java and the JCP, Google's ongoing and generous investment in and championing of open Java-related technologies (Guava, GWT, GAE/J, Android, to name a few) is a welcome bright spot. Without their work ... well, I'd still be a Java developer, but I'd probably be looking for a way out.
That I'm still enthusiastic about coding in Java, in spite of the murky politics, is largely due to my friends at Google, which should tell you something.
2 comments:
Tim, I like your post. I have also been looking for a way out of Java... Looked at few dynamic languages and liked them.
Sadly, the enterprise is always behind in adopting change!
Don't get me wrong: I am still enthusiastic about Java, and I'm not looking for a way out. I'm just saying that without the championship of people like my friends at Google, I might not feel this way.
For the kind of work I'm doing, dynamic languages aren't as appropriate; with Java I get closer to the ideal of "if it compiles, it works".
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