I kinda want to say that stripping all that out removes an early opportunity to learn some fundamental concepts. But that's easy to say in hindsight. If the popularity of less-dense languages like JS and Python is anything to measure by, then learners need to be able to write working programs and also be able to see what each part of their working does. It also occurs to me that this may not actually help Java, adoption isn't a problem that Java has. But helping replace developers who age out of development will still give Java a lot of staying power.
I agree with a lot of what you're saying. The only thing I'd add is I've seen a lot of students trying to learn Java pass on learning it more or stop learning programming entirely because Java has a steeper learning curve than some other languages. I started out with C and C++ when I was learning, which was a challenge, but I'm personally glad I stuck with it!
Efficiency doesn't always equate to excellence! :) I'm new to coding and actively learning the foundational knowledge in Java, I'm opting for a more challenging learning approach. Knowing the foundation is important and should never be a short cut!
Well put! I would normally 100% agree that you need to know all the fundamentals to really know what's going on, which is why I have a love-hate relationship with something like python that abstracts so much from you. I can appreciate though that when I was learning Java, I had no idea what a "class" was or what the "static" keyword meant and it felt weird to have to include it all. Its nice for example that you don't need to know about packages and modules immediately. Good luck on your Java learning journey, in my opinion its well worth taking the time to really learn how it all works!
I agree those are very important pieces of the language to understand over time, not necessarily in your first program. The nice part about this feature is you can keep doing the previous way (and really should for anything more than a small application) but at least you have the option to remove some boilerplate code or not have to understand static on day 1 for example 😊
Agreed - while I think its important to understand the real "guts" of a language eventually, you don't need it all thrown at you at once in my opinion. Some people learn well that way though, in which case you just don't turn on the preview features :)
