Towards a Future-Proof Chapter 5: A JLS Refactoring Initiative

[Angelos Bimpoudis]

Hello amber-dev, amber-spec-experts,
I wanted to share some emerging thoughts and possible directions regarding the flexibility and expressiveness of conversions in the Java language. Given recent interest in the positioning of conversions in JEP 507, it seemed a timely opportunity to share this ongoing analysis. This is especially relevant as Java continues to evolve its pattern matching facilities and looks ahead to Project Valhalla.
The framework proposed by JEP 507 is more than just a cleanup of existing rules. It's a necessary precursor as the language moves towards enabling user-defined conversions and supporting richer numeric types. These planned features will fundamentally expand how values can be expressed and composed in Java. For a look ahead, I recommend these recent JVMLS presentations:

  *   Growing the Java Language<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz7Or9C0TpM>
  *
Paths to Support Additional Numeric Types on the Java Platform<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xCdJb_zI5us>

As we continue to evolve towards value types and numeric types, it becomes clear that the framework for conversions, which stood us well when we only had eight primitive types, needs to be shored up somewhat. Attached is a rough exploration of the issues surrounding shoring up the framework for conversions so that it can support these new directions for Java:

  *
Towards a Future-Proof Chapter 5: A JLS Refactoring Initiative<https://cr.openjdk.org/~abimpoudis/posts/amber-design-chapter5.html>

Best regards,
Angelos


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