Why there was a need to use default methods in Interface

[William Clark]

In addition to what Brian said, "default" is not only used for 
interfaces; it's also used in switch statements and annotation definitions.

On 3/31/2013 3:18 PM, Mrityunjay Sharma wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>
> My question is more about on why mark the method as default explicitly,
> when compiler can perform the task for me (marking the implementation in
> interface as default). With this there will be one less keyword which is
> used only for interfaces.
>
> Thanks & Regards,
> MJ
>
>
> On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 12:42 AM, Mohammed Sanaulla <sanaulla123 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> I think the query was why to use "default" keyword in the interface while
>> providing the implementation. It could have been skipped and instead allow
>> the compiler to identify that any implementation in an interface would be
>> default method.
>> Please correct me if I misinterpreted the question.
>>
>> Mohamed Sanaulla <http://blog.sanaulla.info> |
>> http://in.linkedin.com/in/mohamedsanaulla
>>
>>
>> On 1 April 2013 00:35, Brian Goetz <brian.goetz at oracle.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Interface evolution.
>>>
>>> Interfaces like Collection cannot be added to, because there are already
>>> implementations of Collection out there, so if we added a method to
>>> Collection, it would render all existing implementations not
>>> compileable.  This means that interfaces like Collection could not be
>>> evolved once published.
>>>
>>> Default methods provide a path to evolving interfaces over time, as it
>>> lets you compatibly add to an interface as long as the functionality you
>>> want can be expressed in terms of existing interface methods.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 3/31/2013 2:48 PM, Mrityunjay Sharma wrote:
>>>> Hi All,
>>>>
>>>> I have a question regarding providing the support for adding default
>>> method
>>>> in interface.
>>>> When we are adding an implementation  in interface, compiler can itself
>>>> decide whether its an default implementation or not. As far as i know we
>>>> cannot use default methods for any class, instead we can only use it in
>>>> interfaces. Then why there was a need to use default methods.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks & Regards,
>>>> Mrityunjay
>>>>
>>>
>