Experience Report using various Project Amber Features

[Brian Goetz]

This bears out one of my background assumptions about these features -- 
that clean, carefully engineered codebases will benefit more from these 
features than most, because they will already be well factored, 
single-responsibility, leaning heavily on immutability, etc.  So it's 
not surprising you found immediate applications for records, for 
example.  The codebases that lean more heavily on mutation, probably 
will have a harder time.  The hope is that these features will provide a 
nudge towards these practices which are good in their own right....

On 4/26/2020 6:22 PM, Donald Raab wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> I wanted to share our recent experience upgrading several OSS code 
> katas to Java 14 with this group. We will continue leveraging new 
> Project Amber and other OpenJDK project features in these katas when 
> we find opportunities to. Overall, our experience has been quite 
> positive.
>
> Here’s a link to the collection of katas, all of which are now 
> compiling with Java 14. The katas started out on Java 8, and were 
> upgraded to Java 10 two years ago. We just upgraded to Java 14 a few 
> weeks ago.
>
> https://github.com/BNYMellon/CodeKatas
>
> We tagged the repo with “Java-14” on GitHub to make the Java 14 
> examples easy for developers to find.
>
> https://github.com/topics/java-14
>
> The specific Project Amber features we are using in the katas are:
>
> 1. Local Variable Type Inference
>
> We have experimented with using the LVTI feature throughout the katas 
> since Java 10 was released. This feature did not make a huge impact in 
> terms of readability in the kata code itself but did prove useful in 
> some cases. With the Java 14 upgrade, we introduced a proof of concept 
> collections framework in the Deck of Cards Kata that adds eager APIs 
> mirroring Stream protocols directly collection interfaces. The APIs we 
> built in the proof of concept are implemented via default methods in 
> the interfaces. Here for the first time, I was finally able to 
> experiment with using LVTI in library code. This had a positive impact 
> on the readability of the the library code IMO. This makes me wonder 
> how much LVTI is being leveraged for good benefit in the JDK code itself.
>
> Examples:
> https://github.com/BNYMellon/CodeKatas/blob/master/deck-of-cards-kata/src/main/java/bnymellon/codekatas/deckofcards/custom/collections/MutableList.java
> https://github.com/BNYMellon/CodeKatas/blob/master/deck-of-cards-kata/src/main/java/bnymellon/codekatas/deckofcards/custom/collections/CustomCollectionsDeckOfCardsAsList.java
>
> 2. Records
>
> I tried leveraging records with Card class in the Deck Of Cards Kata. 
> This worked out well and delivered the savings I had expected. Kudos!
>
> Example:
> https://github.com/BNYMellon/CodeKatas/blob/master/deck-of-cards-kata/src/main/java/bnymellon/codekatas/deckofcards/Card.java#L30
>
> I will look to use the record feature in the Donut Kata as well for 
> implementing the Donut Class.
>
> 3. Pattern Matching for instanceof
>
> This feature worked out great. Well done!
>
> Example:
> https://github.com/BNYMellon/CodeKatas/blob/master/deck-of-cards-kata/src/main/java/bnymellon/codekatas/deckofcards/custom/collections/MutableCollection.java#L24
>
> As an OSS library developer, it is not often I get to use the latest 
> available features in production library code, as providing 
> compatibility to our existing client base which remains mostly on Java 
> 8 makes it impossible. It was a pleasure leveraging these new features 
> in the katas.
>
> Thanks,
> Don
>