Final defenders

[Stephen Colebourne]

On 8 August 2012 11:37, Talden <talden at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 8, 2012 at 9:49 PM, Stephen Colebourne <scolebourne at joda.org> wrote:
>> Where there is no doubt in my mind is that I will use traits (in
>> whatever form they are provided) for far, far more than interface
>> evolution when JDK8 is released.
>
> This paragraph stood out to me.  The wording is important.

Let me reword then.

A new feature is being added to JDK8 - default method implementations
in interfaces.
Some are trying to state that this should only be used for interface evolution.
I am stating that I will use it for multiple-inheritance/trait-like
behaviour, far, far more than interface evolution.

More broadly, I'm saying that interface evolution is only occasionaly
an issue I face. And yes, this new feature will be useful for
interface evolution, but that won't be its prime use for me.

Having established the above, it is clear to me that it would be far
better to have a properly designed fuller implementation, than suffer
from the hamstrung API designs we will see (like the "do" method
prefix) without the fuller trait-like feature.

> It seemed that what you were really saying was "...that I will use
> interface default methods to implement traits far, far more...". I say
> that because you cannot say that you will 'use traits' when they're
> not on offer - you can only state an intent to use the offered
> features in an unintended way.

I'm advocating that the "unintended way"/"misuse" argument will be
ignored, and this feature will get used far beyond the original
intent. There is nothing I can see that Oracle can do to prevent that.

Stephen