Spin Loop Hint support: Draft JEP proposal

[Andrew Haley]

On 07/10/15 02:50, Joseph D. Darcy wrote:
> Taking a long-term view, it seems to me premature to burn this kind of 
> hint into the Java SE API (effectively) forever in the absence of 
> experience that the hint in this form is useful and will continue to be 
> useful in 5 years, 10 years, etc.

This seems to me to be a very odd thing to say.  Of course there is no
experience with this in Java because it's not been available, but
there is plenty of experience outside Java.  If this goes into a JDK-
specific API we'll also have to support it for a long while or we'll
break programs.  It's not obvious how pushing this outside Java SE
will aid practical portability.

Also, this hint is very much in tune with the trend to do more in Java
and less in native code: it moves the barrier between code that must
be native and can be Java.  That's a good thing.

Andrew.