Why does this() and super() have to be the first statement in a constructor?

[Ulf Zibis]

Am 11.10.2011 22:03, schrieb Mike Duigou:
> I submitted a proposal for exactly this request as part of the original coin call for proposals.
>
> http://mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/coin-dev/2009-March/000798.html
>
> (long thread follows)

Much thanks Mike!

Unfortunately I missed this, as I inscribed to coin list on March 30 2009.

Most work for defining a standard seems to be done already.

So my answer to the initial question now is:

This restriction is a historical convenience to make the implementation of the java compiler less 
complicated, simplify the java language spec, and perhaps to avoid the additional discussion in 
"Learning Java" books ;-) , but there is no technical reasonable for this.

-Ulf