[External] : Re: ReversibleCollection proposal

[Brian Goetz]

> Has it ever been conceived to create an entire new API like how it was
> done for Dates and Times? Obviously this would be a massive
> undertaking, but it seems to me we've just about reached the limits of
> how far we can stretch the current API.

"This code is a mess, we should throw it away and rewrite it"

    -- every developer

Don't confuse the volume of "I would rather do it this way" replies with 
the complexity of this issue; I think that's just the nature of the game 
("Being the biggest crime of the last 50 years, and everybody wanted to 
get in the newspaper story about it.")  Stuart's proposal is a measured, 
responsible, carefully-thought-through way to extend the framework we have.

In addition to "massive undertaking", and in addition to "if you think 
you can't get people to agree on something the size of a golf ball, try 
to get them to agree on something the size of Montana", there's another 
massive problem here: migration.  It's not just a matter of having a 
"better" Collections library; the collection interfaces we have 
(Collection, List, Map, Set) have found their way into the API of nearly 
every Java library.  Moving to Collections II would then force a 
migration on every one of those libraries (or consumer of those libraries.)