I need your opinion...

[Neal Gafter]

A Java-like language went through this kind of change a few years ago and was extremely well received by its users.  I understand your philosophical position, but it isn't supported by the evidence.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joshua Bloch <jjb at google.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 22, 2009 12:02 AM
To: John Rose <John.Rose at sun.com>
Cc: coin-dev <coin-dev at openjdk.java.net>
Subject: Re: I need your opinion...

Mark,
I have to disagree with my esteemed colleague John on this one.  I believe
that every language has certain characteristics that make it what it is, and
that these things simply shouldn't be changed.  I believe that one such
attribute of Java is that all declared entities have an explicit declared
type.  I believe it would do great harm to the language to change this.

   Josh

On Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 1:40 PM, John Rose <John.Rose at sun.com> wrote:

> On Mar 21, 2009, at 12:52 PM, Marek Kozieł wrote:
>
> > Allow final variables and final Fields (except blank final), to not
> > having explicit Type.
>
> Yes.  Someone should work exactly this (and no more) into a separate
> proposal, if it hasn't been done already.
>
> -- John
>
> Alternatives: "? foo" would sort of work since the "?" works, as a
> wildcard, for some other type uses, but it is way too strange
> looking.  A new declare-and-assign operator would be nice for a wrist-
> friendly language, but IMO it is too different from existing Java
> declaration syntaxes.  Beyond subjective esthetics, consistency of
> syntax is important to both mechanical and biological parsers.
> Meanwhile, "final" variables avoid ambiguities about programmer
> intention for additional assignments to mutable variables, so "final"
> works with extra grace for auto-typed variables.
>
>
>