PROPOSAL: Lightweight Properties

[David Goodenough]

On Wednesday 04 March 2009, Joseph D. Darcy wrote:
> David Goodenough wrote:
> > On Wednesday 04 March 2009, Joseph D. Darcy wrote:
> >> Neal Gafter wrote:
> >>> Joe Darcy sort of ruled out adding property support in project coin in
> >>> http://blogs.sun.com/darcy/entry/guidance_measure_language_change_size
> >>
> >> Correct; properties (and closures and reified generics) are examples of
> >> changes out of scope for Project Coin.
> >
> > OK, if it will make easier I will change its name.
>
> Changing the proposal's name doesn't change what it is!
>
> -Joe

Yes, well to quote your blog entry:-

>Properties: While a detailed judgment would have to be made against a 
>specific proposal, as a new kind of type properties would most likely be at 
>least medium-sized.

This one is very small (at least compared to some of the others I see in the
list).  So a detailed judgement needs to made against this specific proposal.

This proposal is an attempt to get the core of the problem, to strip away
much that has been added to existing proposals, and to solve the problems
that any Beans Binding framework and APIs like the JPA Criteria API have
and that can currently only be solved by using String field names which
can not reasonably be checked by a compiler/IDE.   I would suggest that
one of Java's greatest strengths is its checkability, and the lack of this
simple proposal (or something like it) drives a coach and horses through 
that strength leaving it not much better than a scripting language.

David