Lambda Conversion Considered Harmful?

[Neal Gafter]

On Fri, Feb 19, 2010 at 11:18 AM, Joshua Bloch <jjb at google.com> wrote:
> I don't think so.  The BGGA proposal also uses the lambda conversion to
> produce SAM-type (interface only) implementations.

Not so.  What BGGA calls the lambda conversion is completely unrelated
to what project lambda calls the lambda conversion.  I don't know why
project lambda uses that name, by the way, since it converts a
function type to a SAM type; lambdas have nothing to do with it.

> I believe the lambda
> conversion is just getting in our way.  I really do think we should explore
> a design where we have two distinct syntaxes: one for "structural function
> objects" (lambdas in the current proposal) and one for "nominal function
> objects" (SAM-type instances).

BGGA demonstrates that you can do both with one syntax, and without
the performance hit of the current draft's lambda conversion.