What is a language construct? (was Re: Comment on state of Project Jigsaw)

[Neal Gafter]

On Fri, Dec 23, 2011 at 8:59 AM, Alex Buckley <alex.buckley at oracle.com>wrote:

> One of the fundamental principles of the module system is fidelity between
> compile-time and runtime. Conceptually, to align the language with the
> module system, the scope of observability will grow to encompass module
> dependences and the scope of accessibility will grow to encompass module
> exports. Practically, a developer will know which module his code belongs
> to and which modules he depends on, so there is no need for module names
> within type declarations.


I agree that module names need not be mentioned in Java code.  That was
precisely my point!

But since you are unwilling to accept this growth in the platform and its
> constituent parts, I don't think there's any point in continuing with this
> thread.
>

Actually, I *want* the *platform* to grow to add support for modules.
 Since we agree that there is no place for the mention of module names or
versions in Java code (i.e. the domain of the language specification),
there isn't any point in continuing with this thread.