New candidate JEP: 495: Simple Source Files and Instance Main Methods (Fourth Preview)

[Gavin Bierman]

Point taken but the title reflects the language feature(s) being added. At the moment, according to the JLS (7.3), a *compilation unit* is the top-level symbol for Java programs in the grammar. A compilation unit can be “ordinary” (containing a top level class or interface) or “modular” (containing a module declaration). What this JEP is proposing is a new sort of compilation unit. In the draft spec we call this a “simple" compilation unit, to contrast with “ordinary”. As no human says the phrase “compilation unit”, but rather everyone informally speaks of “source files”, we ended up calling these new sorts of source files “simple”.

I guess one could say “smoother on-ramp”, or any of the alternatives, was similarly “...subjective, vague, generic and unquantifiable”. It’s hard but in the end we settled on using the two significant features (new sort of source file, new sort of main method) as the title. It’s a mouthful, but hopefully the community can help people interested in “the on-ramp stuff I heard about” navigate to the right JEP.

Hope this helps,

Thanks,
Gavin

On 22 Oct 2024, at 21:04, Eirik Bjørsnøs <eirbjo at gmail.com> wrote:

Hi!

I love this feature! However, nothing is ever simple in programming. Especially for beginners.

"Simple" is subjective, vague, generic and unquantifiable. "Simpler" would be more honest, but perhaps it would be possible to come up with something that actually describes this awesome feature?

The JEP summary and goals sections have some bits to start with: "smoother on-ramp", "programming in the small", "beginner friendly". "reduced ceremony"  "small programs".

Cheers,
Eirik.





On Tue, Oct 22, 2024 at 5:38 PM Mark Reinhold <mark.reinhold at oracle.com<mailto:mark.reinhold at oracle.com>> wrote:
https://openjdk.org/jeps/495

  Summary: Evolve the Java programming language so that beginners can
  write their first programs without needing to understand language
  features designed for large programs.  Far from using a separate
  dialect of the language, beginners can write streamlined declarations
  for single-class programs and then seamlessly expand their programs
  to use more advanced features as their skills grow.  Experienced
  developers can likewise enjoy writing small programs succinctly,
  without the need for constructs intended for programming in the large.
  This is a preview language feature.

- Mark

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