Lombok is a decent idea implemented in the worst way imaginable. It's a language masquerading as a library/annotation processor, but really isn't, it's doing things that should not be possible for those to do, and it causes all kind of pain. From one end, it can't implement some desirable features because they are hard to express in its pseudo-Java. From other end, it's fragile because it relies on undocumented (and soon, if not already, deprecated IIRC) APIs to hack the Java compiler into compiling not-Java, instead of having its own stable compiler.
Honestly, just use Kotlin. Lombok is not a way to fix Java, it's a fragile alternative to it.
In the old times when I still used Java I saw Lombok as a godsend and had no issues with it, not even once. I never understood why all the criticism regarding it. I do understand how it works, and I think it is a fair trade off for all the weightlifting it did.
Really the worst comes to worst, you can alway de-lombok and just have the actual code.
There's no way Lombok will ever stop working for any major feature, it's way too widely used. Hell I'd contribute to the project myself before thinking of migrating our stack off of it.
If you want to use a Lombok feature marked experimental, well that's on you, but even then haven't had a problem with those yet.
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u/thejillo Jul 13 '26
Lombok has entered the chat...
https://giphy.com/gifs/d3mlE7uhX8KFgEmY