Data classes

[Mark Raynsford]

On 2017-11-02T11:05:33 -0400
Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:

> > In the proposal, you discuss about adding keywords like "non-final, unfinal, mutable", i.e. considering that there can be a different set of keywords for data class declaration which is different from the one we have on fields. In that spirit, we can have a flag like nullable, maybenull, etc to specify that the compiler will not generate a requireNonNull inside the principal constructor and that equals or hashCode do not need nullchecks.  
> 
> Not really a fair comparison.  The keywords suggested like "non-final" 
> are not adding new concepts; they are merely making explicit something 
> that was previously implicit.  They are more akin to allowing the 
> "package" keyword to describe the default accessibility of class fields, 
> rather than a new feature. Non-nullability, on the other hand, is indeed 
> a new feature.  And, it is not a simple property of fields (well, it 
> could be, but I suspect users would find that to an unsatisfying 
> interpretation of "support for non-nullity.")

I think it would be better to get non-nullability language-wide first
as a separate feature.

-- 
Mark Raynsford | http://www.io7m.com