Too terse and too alien?

[Alessio Stalla]

On Tue, Jun 1, 2010 at 10:07 AM, Howard Lovatt <howard.lovatt at gmail.com> wrote:
> Rémi Forax forax at univ-mlv.fr  Sat May 29 07:14:34 PDT 2010 wrote:
>> I've tried a swearword but legal:
>>
>> #()(#(){}).();
>>
>> The compiler knows more slang words than me :)
>
> Rémi comment, whilst very amusing, is a little worrying. Also there are
> already a number of negative comments, e.g.:
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse/browse_frm/thread/54ab72091a1ffe95
>
>
> and
>
> http://www.baptiste-wicht.com/2010/05/oracle-pushes-a-first-version-of-closures/comment-page-1/#comment-2023
>
>
>  Anyone else worried about the reaction of Java developers who are not so
> involved with lambda dev? Is the syntax too terse and too alien?

I'm not too worried. The C function pointer syntax is also complicated
and a bit "alien", but it's regularly used. I don't particularly like
myself the proposed Java closure syntax, but in the end I think it
doesn't matter much; people will get accustomed to it.
At least this is my opinion; I must say that I'm not a newcomer to
functional programming, so I'm probably biased and not representative
of the Java developer population. OTOH, the growing popularity of
languages such as Scala and Groovy means that more and more Java devs
are being exposed to closures in those languages...

Just my .02

Cheers,
Alessio