function types syntax

[Zdenek Tronicek]

No, I did not. I described priorities for closures syntax. Correctness
does not deal with the syntax.
Concerning your "Java == JDK": discussion on this list is mainly about the
syntax and semantics. Yes, sometimes the implementation issues are
mentioned, but primary focus now is the syntax and semantics.
Implementation issues are usually mentioned only when they restrict either
syntax or semantics (or somebody asks about them).

Z.
-- 
Zdenek Tronicek
FIT CTU in Prague


Lawrence Kesteloot napsal(a):
> On Wed, Jan 6, 2010 at 3:41 AM, Zdenek Tronicek <tronicek at fit.cvut.cz>
> wrote:
>> So far I thought that we all have the same priorities for closures
>> syntax:
>>
>> - readability (they are easy to understand),
>> - intuitiveness (one does not have to learn them for weeks),
>> - completness (the syntax proposed should involve all the use-cases).
>> [- compatibility]
>>
>> Anything else is far less important.
>
> You forgot "correctness", which is actually at the top. I do not want
> readable syntax at the expense of  a broken compiler. Having to
> implement complex features like closures and generics in half a dozen
> compilers and pseudo-compilers will decrease the chance of correctness
> and portability. (If you get a chance, read through the javac sources
> to see just how much incomprehensible code is littered throughout to
> get generics to work. It's frightening. When I added list
> comprehensions, the bulk of my frustrations were with getting the
> feature to work with generics, despite the fact that I was working at
> a level where they were supposed to have already been erased.)
>
> To put this another way, imagine the GWT project being started after
> 1.7 is out, rather than when 1.4 was out. Would they have:
>
> 1. Aimed for 1.4 compatibility, guaranteeing that none of their active
> code could be compiled (because of 1.5 features, generics, and
> closures).
> 2. Aimed for 1.7 compatibility, making their task even more daunting.
> 3. Scrapped the whole project.
>
> I suspect 3, though of course we'll never know.
>
> I'm not arguing to scrap closures. I'm arguing against the repeated
> arguments on this list that Java == JDK and as long as we have a
> single working implementation, then we're done.
>
> Lawrence
>
>