IntStreams and the case of the missing reduce

[Richard Warburton]

Hi,

Yes it would.  And because of one extra type we lost the symmetry between
> the primitive and object streams, and lost the most useful reduce method
> for raw streams.  I would call that the poorer choice.  The existence of
> the distinction between primitives and objects in Java is annoying enough
> as it is -- what's the point of exasperating it by building interfaces with
> asymmetrys and missing methods for the primitives vs objects.
>

I think the thing you need to consider is whenever you say "one more
functional interface" for primitives its really 3 since you need to cover
int/long/double. And if you need to specialise by two arguments which might
be different (eg: zip) then its 9 interfaces.

If you look at the API as a whole there are compromises, especially around
primitives. The real solution to the primitive problems is a unified type
system rather than adding loads more functional interfaces. Hopefully this
will be a focus of development in Java 9.

regards,

  Richard Warburton

  http://insightfullogic.com
  @RichardWarburto <http://twitter.com/richardwarburto>