Foot Gun Locked And Loaded

I’ve spent more time than I want to admit in the past several days digging into a Java+Tomcat web application. If I never see another XML file in my life it’ll be too soon.

Java isn’t a bad language by any means, but it does often bring some baggage. It seems to offer more than the average number of opportunities for developers to run off the rails. And since it’s a typical first language in many degree programs, pretty much everyone knows a bit of it, in particular poor-quality developers who never bother to learn anything else and are happy to bang out haphazard enterprise software 9-5 for the rest of their lives.

To be clear, I’m not saying all Java developers are below average. I’ve known a number of counter-examples myself. I’m only saying that many below average developers end up focusing on Java. And that’s unfortunately resulted in a metric crapton of poorly written Java apps.