Draft JEP Announcement: "Computed Constants"

[Brian Goetz]

> I share your view that it is important to be able to use 
> ComputedConstant "early" in the VM startup sequence. There is nothing 
> inherent to the proposed API that *requires* a lambda or a method 
> reference to be used. An anonymous or regular class, implementing 
> Supplier would also do. Also, there is nothing fundamental that 
> prevents us from *implementing* the API in a way it can be used "early".
>
> We do not add any keywords, the JEP is a pure library approach so, I 
> do not foresee any backward compatibility issues.

Allow me to translate ...

Remi was assuming a goal.  The problem is that he didn't state that 
goal, or his assumption that this was a goal, before jumping to 
criticizing your proposal.  As a result, his criticism was unclear, and 
IMO misplaced.

The hidden goal that Remi was assuming is that "it should be possible to 
migrate existing code that uses static final fields to use computed 
constants in a source- and binary-compatible way." Now, it should have 
been entirely clear from content that this was a non-goal of this JEP 
(you didn't propose a language or VM solution, and that was clearly 
deliberate), and if he wanted to express his disappointment, he should 
have done so more directly, such as "I wish there was a way to let old 
code play in this game."  To which the answer would have been "We may 
get there someday, some day, but we're starting with something simpler."

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