Straw man section 7: Method References

[David Goodenough]

On Monday 14 December 2009, Stephen Colebourne wrote:
> 2009/12/14 David Goodenough <david.goodenough at linkchoose.co.uk>:
> > A field reference is a means to get rid of String literal field names
> > from places like Beans, Beans Bindings, and JPA.  String literal fields
> > are uncheckable by compilers/IDEs, IDEs can not refactor them and can 
not
> > provide context assist for them.
> 
> You are talking about Method and Field *literals*, not Method
> *references*. See FCM for the distinction.
> 
> Mark Reinhold is only considering adding Method *references* to JDK 7
> at the moment.
> 
> Stephen
> 
Having reread the FCM spec, I can not see that what I am createing is
not a Method Reference.  Its content might be populated with a literal
syntax, but it has to be generated somehow, and I am not really that
bothered by how it is generated, as long as it can be in a clean and 
checkable way (checkability being the vital component, cleanliness
being merely desirable).

In fact one of the destinctions that I get from reading the FCM docs is
that they are more than just a Field (or Method).  Section A3 for instance
talks about a class which contains the object that this Method/Field is 
bound do, and I would be using a very similar method.

But then of course I may have missed something in reading the FCM

David