[External] : Re: Proposal: Allow annotations on module directives

[Ron Pressler]

> On 12 Nov 2024, at 18:47, Alessandro Autiero <alautiero at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'd like to pinpoint a particular issue, but I'd argue that, as this is a limitation of the language itself, it's impossible to find instances in the ecosystem where this is an issue as the projects that would use this feature can't exist yet.

That it’s not always easy to articulate the justification for a feature that doesn’t yet exist is why this work is often the hardest and longest part of any feature. It’s not even enough to describe how a feature could be used. We need to establish why it would be significantly superior to alternatives.

I’m not saying there's no substantial benefit to the feature you’re proposing, but identifying the right motivation is the core of the contribution. That’s the work. The implementation is secondary. 

> I've included this possibility as last as I don't see any indication that any similar work was done for JEP 120, where the only claimed motivation
> Frequently-used idioms of programming with annotations in EE and elsewhere awkwardly use a container annotation just to simulate the ability to apply multiple annotationsseems to be purely anecdotal. 

Both JEPs 104 and 120 were, indeed, written before we started requiring a more detailed Motivation section, but as Alex points out, the motivation was established (outside the JEP text) before the features were accepted.

— Ron