Add Predicate.of(), Consumer.of(), etc.

[Remi Forax]

Hi all,
today, I stubble on a variant of JDK-8050818 [1],
trying to call negate() on a lambda which is not yet a Predicate (due to 
target typing) which requires either to cast the lambda to a Predicate 
and everybody knows that cast are evil or to add a local variable.

I think there is a way to fix that, it's not very orthodox so I let you 
judge.
The idea is to introduce a static method 'of' on Predicate,
   class Predicate<T> {
     ...
     public static <T> Predicate<T> of(Predicate<T> predicate) {
       return predicate;
     }
   }

so one can write:
   stream.filter(Predicate.of(String::isEmpty).negate())
compared to
   stream.filter(((Predicate<String>)String::isEmpty).negate())

so the question is, does it it worth the cost to introduce a static 
method that basically do nothing on all functional interfaces of 
java.util.function.

cheers,
Rémi

[1] https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8050818