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<font size="4" face="monospace">Similar things have been suggested
before, but there are two primary concerns here that make it a
"clever" but unattractive-in-the-long-term direction.<br>
<br>
The main one is "the onramp should lead to the highway." If we
give a special, magic way to print templated strings, but nothing
else, this is an easy incantation to teach, but it doesn't go very
far. If you want to do even a little bit more (e.g., print to a
file, or to standard error, or just print out a string with no
formatting, etc), you have to switch to a completely different
mechanism, and now you need to know TWO things and know when to
use one or the other. It is a shortcut that becomes a "beginner's
dialect" because it does not lead smoothly to learning the
"regular" language. <br>
<br>
Second, the possibility that a string template could have
side-effects instead of (or worse, in addition to) just taking the
ingredients and mixing them up into a composite thing makes the
concept of string templates more complicated. While we can't
prevent people from sneaking side effects into their template
processors, we shouldn't encourage this, or suggest that all users
have to work this into their mental model. <br>
<br>
So its possible, but I don't think its a good direction for the
language. <br>
<br>
<br>
</font><br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 2/6/2024 11:54 AM, Ian Darwin wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:26d5a32b-338a-4aae-944e-a86378ce90a5@darwinsys.com">
<p>In JEP 445 you wrote:</p>
<p> </p>
<blockquote type="cite">The changes we offer here are just one
step in making Java easier to learn. They do not even address
all the speed bumps in the above <em>Hello, World!</em>
program: The beginner may still be puzzled by the mysterious <code>System.out.println</code>
incantation, and still needs to import basic utility classes and
methods for essential functionality even in first-week programs.
We may address these pains in a future JEP.</blockquote>
While experimenting with the String Template feature, it occurs to
me that a relatively simple expansion of String Templates would
pave over another of those speed bumps. Basically:
<p> PRINT."Hello \{name}. Your balance is \{amount}";</p>
<p>Indeed, the beginner who hasn't yet met string templates can
use the degenerate case</p>
<p> PRINT."Hello world";</p>
<p>and then later "need not discard what they learned in the early
stages, but rather they see how it all fits within the larger
picture."</p>
<p>This compares favorably with, e.g., Python 3's </p>
<p>print('Hello world') and </p>
<p>print(f'Hello {name}, your balance is {balance}')<br>
</p>
<p>This seems like a fairly obvious extension, so I ask: Do you
already have such a thing up your collective sleeves or, if not,
do you think it might be grounds for a JEP proposal?<br>
</p>
</blockquote>
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