JEP 302: Lambda Leftovers

[Martijn Verburg]

I'll preface this with IANALE (I Am Not A Language Expert),

TLDR: I've seen direct evidence of not being able to shadow lambda
parameters actually being beneficial for readability.

-----

I currently read a lot of code by developers who are using lambdas and
wanted to add some anecdotal evidence to the shadowing use case.  I notice
the JEP author has already stated:

"It would be desirable to lift this restriction, and allow lambda
parameters (and locals declared with a lambda) to shadow variables defined
in enclosing scopes. (One possible argument against is readability: if
lambda parameters are allowed to shadow, then in the above example, the
identifier 'key' means two different things in the two places where it is
used, and there seem to be no syntactic barrier to separate the two
usages.)"

---

The readability issue is really cropping up a lot with the lambdas code I'm
seeing. Many developers are already following a short hand idiom for lambda
variables e.g. using 'k' instead of 'key', along with some other idioms
that do lessen the readability of lambdas based code in general. This is
clearly not the fault of the language / syntax today, it's more the fault
of the developer! A similar argument can be applied to the proposed 'var'
JEP, as long a developers name their variables properly, readability is
maintained.

That said, the current status quo of not being able to shadow lambda
parameters is actually forcing developers to think more clearly about
naming and scope, which is generally a good thing.  My concern is that if
we are able to shadow lambda parameters this will cause even more confusion
to the reader unless they carefully hover over the section in their
favourite IDE *or* have the 'scope of variables outside of the lambda vs
inside the lambda' concept firmly in their heads (an educational issue).

----

As a side note, JEPs 300, 301 and 302 are very cool. Anything that improves
type inference and safety automatically for the developer is a welcome
addition and I appreciate how hard it is to get that right internally in
the JVM and in the language.



Cheers,
Martijn

On 7 December 2016 at 08:37, Remi Forax <forax at univ-mlv.fr> wrote:

> I really appreciate this proposal,
> i hit both better disambiguation and shadow of lambda parameters issues
> quite frequently.
>
> For treatment of underscores,
> as i understand, the idea is that you can use '_' as parameter without
> having '_' being entered in the scope of the method,
> i.e. this code will not compile:
>
>   void setBar(Bar _) {
>     foo(_);
>   }
>
> cheers,
> Rémi
>
> ----- Mail original -----
> > De: "mark reinhold" <mark.reinhold at oracle.com>
> > À: "maurizio cimadamore" <maurizio.cimadamore at oracle.com>
> > Cc: platform-jep-discuss at openjdk.java.net
> > Envoyé: Mercredi 7 Décembre 2016 00:50:02
> > Objet: JEP 302: Lambda Leftovers
>
> > New JEP Candidate: http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/302
> >
> > - Mark
>