Amber features 2026

[Archie Cobbs]

Hi Brian,

On Tue, Jan 13, 2026 at 8:33 PM Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:

> While I totally understand why you would want to do that, I don't see the
> connection between pattern assignment and extending the type system to
> permit denotation of quantified or existential types?
>

Well it's kind of a loose "connection" I guess :)

I'm just pointing out that the two features have a common motivation: the
ability to declare a variable that is initialized from some existing
declared variable of an object. This is handy!

This idea of "local type vars" has come up before and been rejected. That's
fine, but if the underlying motivations are the same, then it seems like we
are being inconsistent by promoting one feature while ignoring the other.
They are both useful, and for the same reason (roughly speaking), so why
not complete the picture while we're mucking with the language syntax?

Admittedly, I'm asking not based on some conceptual language design
principle, but simply because this particular omission has always bugged me
and it seems relatively easy to fix without too much ugliness (maybe; to be
determined).

-Archie

-- 
Archie L. Cobbs
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