The future of back-end development

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨iByteABit@lemm.ee⁩ to ⁨programming@programming.dev⁩

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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Aux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Java is getting better each year plus Kotlin works in the same eco system and is hyper popular. I don’t think that Java will wither any time soon.

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- HamsterRage@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Kotlin is a very easy transition, and it sorts out a ton of issues that you find in Java. Certainly easier than moving to Rust.
  
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- iByteABit@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I really like Kotlin, I would much prefer using it at work instead of Java
  
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  - Aux@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It sure is! We moved a few years ago and no one regrets.
    
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lysdexic@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Java gets a bad reputation from proponents of FOMO/fad-driven development, but the whole Java ecosystem was built for the web. Anyone is hard-pressed to find a better tech stack than Java-based frameworks without resorting to hand waving and passing personal opinions as facts.

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- theherk@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I can’t describe it. Java is a good language. I just don’t like it, don’t want to write it, am sick of dealing with its build tooling, and have worn thin of all the IDE’s-do-all-the-work-for-me mentality. Good Java programmers are excellent but they are eclipsed by an army of people that haven’t any idea how it works… in my experience.
  
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- Phoenix@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It may be an opinion, but pointing it out won’t make me like java any more.
  
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keef@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I’m surprised no one has mentioned golang. We have the usual dichotomy of java and rust but there’s a very very good option for those who are worried about rust adoption.

I vastly prefer writing rust code but go on its own gets you very very similar performance at the cost of developer experience. I think sum types are the #1 requested feature so once that comes I’ll be a much happier boy.

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- ursakhiin@beehaw.org ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  I think Golang had the potential to take over just because it’s so easy to pick up and start contributing.
  
  My last position was Golang focused and our hiring was never focused on experience with the language because we knew that if you understood programming concepts you would succeed in Golang.
  
  Today, I’m working on Rust and while I enjoy it for what I’m using it for (Systems level instead of Web Services) I’d be hesitant to suggest it for most backend application just due to the ramp up time for new developers.
  
  tl;Dr Golang will have an easier time hiring for because no language specific experience is required.
  
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starman@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I think that .NET will be used more and more instead of Java, because C# is similar to it, but better¹. And there is also F# which is great too². Rust and JS³ might also get some more usage in backend.

¹The only thing missing is union type. ²And has union type :D. ³And that’s unfortunate because I don’t like JS.

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- TCB13@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  It has nothing to do with “being better”, it is mostly about a corrupt ecosystem and developers not even realizing what happening.
  
  Most non-tech companies use services from consulting companies in order to get their software developed / running. Consulting companies often have large incentives from companies like Microsoft to push their proprietary services. For eg. Microsoft will easily provide all of a consulting companies employees with free Azure services, Office and other discounts if they enter in an exclusivity agreement to sell their tech stack. To make things worse consulting companies live of cheap developers (like interns) and Microsoft and their platform makes things easier for anyone to code and deploy;
  
  Microsoft provider a cohesive ecosystem of products that integrate really well with each other and usually don’t require much effort to get things going - open-source however, usually requires custom development and a ton of work to work out the “sharp angles” between multiple solutions that aren’t related and might not be easily compatible with each other;
  
  Companies will always prefer to hire more less expensive and less proficient people because that means they’re easier to replace and you’ll pay less taxes;
  
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  - sine@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    
    To make things worse consulting companies live of cheap developers (like interns) and Microsoft and their platform makes things easier for anyone to code and deploy
    
    You’re saying this as it is a bad thing when it is not though; better defined APIs and ecosystems that lift cognitive load from you is always a good thing, there is no way to spin that as a negative.
    
    I think dotnet offers an incredibly good ecosystem for development, and I say this as someone that wants to jump ship and change the stack. What pains me the most about the stack is nothing technical. It’s not even the past predatory moves of microsoft, but the developer culture that surrounds it. Most dotnet devs I’ve worked with and talked to seem to be people that simply use visual studio as a window to the rest of the world. They tend to have very poor knowledge about almost everything with barely any fundamentals.
    
    Regarding your open source point I’m not sure I follow, I think everything we use at work is open source already. Everything is on github and there are quite a lot of discussions in how to steer the language and ecosystem being made in the wide open. It reminds me of the openjdk and python ecosystems.
    
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igorlogius@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
Enterprise software dies very very slowly … so i’d expect java to stick around for a long long time.

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- bignavy@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  This is the real answer.
  
  There are still, in the year 2023, Cobal developers graduating and getting hired to work on software.
  
  My alma mater’s website runs on PHP.
  
  The investment to flip even a microservice from one language to another is REALLY high, and most companies won’t pay unless there’s a significant pain point. They might not greenfield new projects with it anymore - but it will still be around effectively forever.
  
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flamboyantkoala@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
I give typescript running a decent shot of being a major force in backend APIs. There’s a draw to being able to code the same language on front and backend. It’s got a stronger type system than Java in strict mode as well.

It also has quick boot time which can help in cloud functions that may eventually become the preferred method of APIs. No server or os to maintain and they are close to the customers location

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- mark@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
  Definitely can second this. JavaScript/TS doesn’t get a great rep being used on the backend. But I use it on quite a few of my projects, one of which gets thousands of requests per minute. I was skeptical of whether or not using Node on the backend would hold up, but the performance has been stellar.
  
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  - sine@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    Thousands of requests per minute can mean many things so maybe you’re referring to several hundred requests per minute. One of our services at work gets 300 requests/second which is ~18K requests per minute and it’s really not that much. We’re using pretty cheap cloud services. Even thrice the traffic is pretty much a slow walk for your average production-grade web framework.
    
    Web frameworks are built to support an insane amount of incoming requests, including node. The issue with node is the single threading and having to scale with worker threads AFAIK.
    
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  - Potatos_are_not_friends@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
    It doesn’t get a great rep? Would love to hear from that perspective. I’m only seeing the opposite.
    
    Many popular node libraries are/have converted to Typescript. I was on the fence last year but now I’m working towards converting my work into Typescript too.
    
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gooey@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
My team is trying to shift away from Java towards a TS backend. Call us stupid but our current Java stack is a nightmare to work with.

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MajorHavoc@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago
In the long run, three players can remain standing:

The obvious choice - it’s JavaScript, because some of us will always follow highlander rules

Whatever is fastest for high performance - odds favor golang, but I’m just guessing

Whatever has the best library support - there’s currently a run-off between Python and NodeJs to unseat PHP and Java, in my random opinion
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