Local functions

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 11 February 2010 00:38, Alex Buckley <Alex.Buckley at sun.com> wrote:
> "APIs like it" is a comprehensive term. You mention predicates; any
> filter operation, be it in ParallelArray or the most sequential
> collections API, is an obvious candidate for lambdas.
[then later]
> Thanks for your view. The Java ecosystem is a big place. This project is
> interested primarily in supporting parallel execution.

These two statements appear to be in contradiction. Or do you believe
that you can primarily support parallel execution without compromising
the more common case of regular inline non-parallel functors?

> Goals at http://blogs.sun.com/mr/entry/closures.

I'm looking for something clearer now we are in the formal project
(not a kick off blog entry).

If you'll forgive me, I seem to recall lack of requirements being a
common complaint about Project Jigsaw too. ie. I'm suggesting you
might find it something useful to do from a community engagement POV,
to set expectations in the wider community as well as to clarify the
debate here. IMO, doing so on Jigsaw would have helped the community
debate there too.

I certainly don't think the need for requirements is philosophical!
(ie. I'm trying to encourage you to do things that will help everyone
outside Sun understand what is going on here and make your lives a lot
easier down the road)

>  If you are
> interested primarily in something else, there are other projects for you.

There are no other projects with any chance of altering the Java
language. My interest here is solely in ensuring that the design
chosen will appeal to and be usable by to the wider community of Java
developers (non alpha-geeks) - and yes, I know that will be my
interpretation of their needs. I remain open to reading any proposal
you may put forward and judging it on its merits.

Stephen