JEP-476 module import considered harmful

[Cristian Mocanu]

Hello,

My name is Cristia Mocanu, and I am a Java developer with almost 20 years
of experience.

I was made aware of "JEP-476 module import" recently.

I strongly recommend making sure this JEP is abandoned and never gets
merged into Java.
The reason is that a module import shares the same problem with the star
import: it makes the code much more difficult to understand without an IDE
(e.g. when reviewing a PR on GitHub).
The problem with the star import is so bad, that many official code styles,
and many teams I worked in, explicitly forbid star imports, making the
build fail if one is found (i.e. by using Checkstyle's AvoidStarImport
rule).

The module import, just like the star import, will have the very bad effect
of encouraging people to write code that is difficult to understand.
The advantage would be that the VIM guy can type less when writing a Java
file. Don't get me wrong, I use VIM myself (even the IdeaVim plugin), but
the last time I wrote an import manually was probably 15 years ago - in the
real world, we type the class name, and IntelliJ or some other IDE writes
the import for us.

With fewer words: this JEP has nasty disadvantages, without providing any
real world benefit.

Kind regards,
Cristian
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