Typed Method handles

[Neal Gafter]

Paulo-

I think you misunderstood the technical meaning of my comment, its intended
tone, and my corporate affiliation.

What I meant by "if we can't then we'll regret not doing it today" is that I
do not believe we will be able to add reified function types in the future
because it would break existing code (I can expand on this point if you
like).  Function types could have a beneficial affect on the shape of APIs
being added along with project Lambda.  If function types are added after SE
8, then it will be too late to adapt the APIs added in SE 8 to use them
instead of SAM interfaces.  Therefore I think we may come to regret not
adding function types as part of project Lambda.

I admit my comments are rather short at times, but I didn't mean this to be
snarky.

I am affiliated with neither Oracle nor Google.  In fact I work for
Microsoft, but I do care very much about the Java community and the future
of the Java programming language.  Although I'm not happy about the lawsuit
between Oracle and Google, I'm very happy that Oracle is now taking control
of the Java language with some long-term thinking (though I might not agree
with all the details).  You'll be able to hear more of how I feel about
these topics when the video of my keynote from a couple of weeks ago in
Paris is published <http://www.whatsnextparis.com/>.

Cheers,
Neal

On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Paulo Silveira - Caelum <
paulo.silveira at caelum.com.br> wrote:

> 2011/6/9 Neal Gafter <neal at gafter.com>:
> > On Thu, Jun 9, 2011 at 8:42 AM, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com>
> wrote:
> >
> >> and while erased function types may seem better than nothing now, so did
> >> erased generics way back when...
> >>
> >> If we can have reified function types in the
> >> future, then this will be an obvious place to backfill this association.
> >>
> >
> > And if we can't, then we'll regret not doing it today.
>
> We will regret if they try to reify generics in JSR 335. It probably
> would take a lot of time and end up splitting Java (again) in Java 8
> and 9, and having lambda only in Java 9+.
>
> The guys  here are doing an incredible work to have lambda not
> delayed, and I really do not understand why Neal Gafter keeps being so
> rude on the list. It is not the first time.
>
> This is a top-notch tech list, where we can lear a lot from the spec
> leaders and experts, which are sharing everything they can. It is a
> pity to have Google-Oracle tensions around.
>
> Paulo
>
> >
> >
>