Records -- current status

[Kevin Bourrillion]

I hope we would be very reluctant to start introducing keywords that
contain punctuation ("non-final"). it's never been done and would likely
confuse any number of tools for a while.

I somewhat like (gut-level) the idea of a single modifier on the record
itself that reverses the default for all the fields at once... it
emphasizes that the entire thing is becoming a mutable record, even if you
put final back onto some of the fields.


On Thu, Mar 29, 2018 at 11:39 AM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com>
wrote:

>
> What else could we do? Don't take these random ideas too seriously, but:
>> maybe the declaration is a "mutable record"? Or just a "class", with some
>> other signal that many record-like features are relevant? Or maybe the
>> mutable fields appear in a different context?
>>
>> I feel like we could probably come up with something reasonable if we
>> felt that final by default with a "non-final" opt-in is too confusing.
>>
>
> I'm OK with finding other ways to do this than "non-final", though I think
> its quite likely that the "non-*" convention will muscle its way in at some
> point anyway (to name one example, classes that would be sealed by default
> will need a way to say "not sealed"), so I don't want to put too much stock
> in keyword-sticker-shock-avoidance.  (I actually think non-final is a
> pretty good answer here; no one will be confused the first time they see it
> (they'll just bikeshed that it should have been spelled μtable" or
> something like that.))
>
> I'm less OK with saying "let's do immutable records now, and then figure
> out the mutability story."
>
> While some of the goodies for records will eventually filter down in some
> form to classes (e.g., better ways to fill in the obvious defaults in
> constructors, better ways to declare equals/hashCode), I also don't really
> want to count on that; I'd like to do a complete record feature and then
> select the bits we want to transplant to classes.
>
> I guess the question that this particular sub-thread is looking for an
> answer to is, which we dislike less: having to say final a lot, or having a
> new and different default for mutability of record fields.  (Or something
> else.)
>
>


-- 
Kevin Bourrillion | Java Librarian | Google, Inc. | kevinb at google.com
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