ValueType.findConstructor

[John Rose]

On Jun 26, 2017, at 10:46 AM, Paul Sandoz <paul.sandoz at oracle.com> wrote:
> 
> Separately, in my enthusiasm i may be going down a rabbit hole regarding re-construction, arguably it’s not in the spirit of minimal. Still at some point i think we should explore this notion of a more extensible wither for value types (but it also seems application to ref/data classes too).

FTR, more on reconstrucors:  https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8182843 <https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-8182843>

In that document, reconstructor is mostly a language-level concept with small
tweaks at the VM level (to make <init> slightly less unique).  So, yes, it isn't part of MVT.

I think what you've found is that method handle combinators are a place where we
can experiment with the use of reconstructors, before language changes.  But that's
not MVT either, I think.

Another thing we have learned about value types is that they don't really have
an <init> method; they have factories.  We'll *need* that concept for value types,
and it will turn out to be *useful* for object types.  So at some point we'll have
to coin a name that is the factory version of <init>, perhaps something like <new>,
<instance>, <make>, <factory>, etc.

Again, none of the above is minimal, unless and except it somehow gets MVT
out the door faster.

— John