I’ve noticed a distinct lack of opinion coming from (what I personally view to be) some of our more prominent java developers in the industry on the closures debate.
By this I mean Gavin / Rod / Howard and Cedric.
I know there may be many valid reasons to not give opinions - such as not traditionally being language designers, or worries about relationships and arguments with the people involved…or just not wanting to add to the fray of opinions - but you guys are probably uniquely qualified to give them more than the majority of typical java users (myself included) and might be doing the language a disservice by not coming out and saying something.
Seems like the time is now to make a stand and say something if you are going to, but maybe it’s not necessary or there are other factors involved that I just don’t understand. .. ?
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Feb 28th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
From Howard at http://tapestryjava.blogspot.com/2004/07/this-great-hacker-does-use-java.html :
“I hope the Java language designers [do] the same, and give us some stuff we could use (such as … closures).”
From Cedric at http://beust.com/weblog/archives/000333.html :
“Let’s put the intellectual debate aside and observe that closures are extremely useful. C# already had a head start over Java with delegates and is now pulling further ahead with closures. Let’s hope Java will follow suit.”
Feb 28th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
@Neal:
Thanks for pointing those out, I’d either forgotten about them or didn’t think to reference previous thoughts.
What I’d like to hear even more is a definite confirmation that they want real closures in Java, which is exactly what these statements imply but I didn’t want to put words in their mouths. ..
p.s. great work you guys are doing on that stuff. Here’s to hoping it is accepted.
Feb 28th, 2008 at 4:15 pm
I guess I’m a bit lost. They guys you reference surely know their stuff, but language changes are going to affect us mere mortals, too. Frankly, I’d rather see what the non-language designers come up with, since I believe it’d be more practical. Obviously, the people you listed aren’t necessarily language designers, but I think you get the general point.
For what it’s worth, I’m still a bit bitter by the property proposal I saw that wanted to add a “->” operator. A special operator essentially negates the point of using properties. I get the feeling at times that the people designing this stuff aren’t actually using it.
Feb 29th, 2008 at 11:21 pm
Kevin: You probably want your cars designed by non-car-designers and your poems written by non-poets, your bridges designed by non-bridge-designers and your paintings produced by non-artists? Car designers do drive cars, bridge designers do cross bridges, artists do admire art, and language designers do write programs. In all these cases, they probably do more so than average. They are mere mortals who have skill and training, and hopefully talent, to do a good job at the task, and they work with consumers of their art to learn more about the implications of their decisions. However, most of the language proposals widely discussed recently were written by those without training, skill, or experience.
Mar 31st, 2008 at 5:16 am
Neal:
Your assertion is ridiculous as is most of your argument. I hope you don’t twist an ankle jumping to conclusions.
What I want is someone not far removed from the real world designing things. I attended grad school and worked closely with several language designers. They are very smart people that know their stuff, but are often removed from working in the trenches, as it were. So, they’d design stuff that on paper looked great, but fell apart in practice. They design stuff that took advantage of underlying computer architecture or theory without regard to how a user would interface with it.
I’d really like to avoid another generics debacle.
Mar 31st, 2008 at 10:11 am
@Kevin:
I’ve personally found API design alone to be one of the most challenging programming problems of my career. Solutions can be derived for a number of problems a number of different ways, but solutions that must involve human understanding are much much harder.
I think it goes along the same lines as “the more you know, the more you learn how little you know”.
This shouldn’t be a publicly debated decision. The people that know the most despite knowing how little they know are probably the safest bet on making the right decisions for us - imho.
Mar 31st, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Jesse,
That’s not really the point I’m disputing. I’m just saying that many other talented people and those not designing public frameworks can have equal validity. Take even T4 for instance. I think Howard had done a great job improving on T3. You and Andy, however, have made T4 a much more usable and easier to use framework than T4 was when originally released.
My point isn’t to diminish these guys opinions, it’s more to give credence to those of others. When you always put your faith in one group, you lack the diversity needed to get as close to an optimal solution as you can, IMHO *shrug*