Suggestions for Java Generics Semantics in Java Version 7.0 _ Resurrected
Jaisimha Narahari
jcnarahari at yahoo.com
Thu Jun 18 06:47:41 PDT 2009
As a person who put up the Initial Suggestion in the current thread of discussions, I feel obliged to put the following on record:
1. I am ofcourse pleased to see that several posts continued the thread, all of which
enlightened me quite a bit, because I am one of those "millions of Java users" out there
who is not directly involved in systems development, leave alone projects like JDK7.
As a result, since I cannot contribute to technical discussions regarding the
implementation or otherwise of Reified Generics in Java, I find it appropriate
to bow out of the discussions at this point, but with this one last post.
In this regard, the requirement that I put forth was not so much a requirement for one
person but something that seemed a very good idea for the Java Community as a
whole.
As for reseaching into the aspect before putting up the topic, the answers all seem to lie
in assorted blogs of the experts. It would be nice if there was a central place that a Java
Programmer getting curious about why Type Parameters of Generics in Java 5 are
getting the short shrift at runtime. Those guys that do wonder and want to know more
have to resort to search engines and locate and read these blogs. The Community
should be on the same page, atleast with regard to the pros and cons of features not
made available.
2. My intention was not to open up controversies regarding transparency / opacity of Sun's
Processes and I certainly hope that this will not detract from the main topic.
3. It has been made quite clear to me that a lot of experts have put their considerable
efforts and time behind this. Yet the issue seems to be one that holds promise,
and if the experts in Sun and other places think so, let there be a new JSR
for just this, since JDK7 does not seem to the release that can achieve Reification of
Generics, due to the complexity arising from both Backwards Compatibility and
Migration Compatibility, with Deprecation of Raw Types seemingly not serving
anybody's interest
Thanks to All, and Bye.
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