At first you'll feel frustrated saying like a child "but do I HAVE TO", to be told "Yes, you do have to"; Perl is a language that lets you do anything and assumes you know what you're doing, whereas Java is a real 'Maiden Aunt' that wags its finger at you over anything a little bit off colour.

You'll get into the habit of doing these extras in time, and the light will dawn that FOR LARGER PROJECTS they save time in the long run.  You're not left hunting for obscure bugs in programs that compile sucessfully - instead, the compile has MADE you write cleaner code early on, so far fewer run-time bugs will crop up.

The OO approach of Java means that small applications are longer and slower to code than in Perl, but it's much more extensible - resulting in Java sometimes being faster overall to develop than Perl for big jobs.  Mind you, if you stick to the OO and OO rules in Perl, that's pretty good for the big projects too.

I found this which may be of interest to anyone in the Perl to Java transition as I am
Its an overview of Java from the Perl perspective.

http://www.theperlreview.com/Articles/v0i5/perl-java.pdf

jfp

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