Can we also get some feedback on specialization, please?

[Brian Goetz]

There's been a lot of passionate discussion here about the directions we 
should or should not take Java. And this is all understandable, and 
perhaps inevitable, but ... it seems to be crowding out what is actually 
the primary purpose of this (-dev) list.  We had hoped, in taking the 
effort to write up State of the Specialization, to get some comments on 
... specialization :)

So far, nearly all the comments have been on the speculative parts of 
the writeup (layers/conditional methods), as well as the usual 
(supersized) portion of "I think you should do X/Y/Z instead".  Which is 
all OK, but we were actually hoping to get some feedback on the part 
that is written up in some detail -- and mostly implemented!  I know 
it's fun to discuss the big sexy stuff, but we can't let this crowd out 
the main goal.

So my question is: has anyone tried to write a program with specialized 
generics with the valhalla implementation?   Well, we'd really 
appreciate it.

I know people want to contribute.  At least right now, here's what 
contribution looks like from our perspective:

    1.) Please try it out!  Write some code!
    2.) Tell us what works and what doesn't!
    3.) Nice comments are always a bonus!  (And are welcome even if you 
didn't do (1) and (2)).
    4.) If you can't do (1) and (2), and still have something important 
to say in the big-picture department, please do it a) nicely, b) 
constructively, c) succinctly.

Thanks,
-Brian