Delete comment from: Neal Gafter's blog
jvb,
I don't know whether James Gosling thinks differently about how Java should feel these days but I think it is important for us to qualify exactly what "Java feel" actually means.
To me, "Java feel" means ease of development and readability above performance and kitchen-sink features. Specifically I believe this means Java omits features (with low power-to-weight ratio) by design, and the language is so simple that any developer can look at the code and immediately know what it does. This means that the syntax set has to be as small as possible and that features that alias the meaning of control-constructs are a bad thing. This is part of the reason that I believe that unlimited operator overloading and closures is a bad thing. You could solve their use-cases in a much more limited fashion which will be easier to learn and use and will be less open to abuse.
Also, I think it is fair to point out that James Gosling has since moved on to Groovy and his experiences there obviously makes him more likely to push Groovy features back into Java in the same way that a C++ programmer is likely to want to push C++ features into Java.
I think we can all agree that throughout recent history Joshua Bloch has been advocating simple/minimalistic design above all else. If you read his Effective Java book you will know what I mean. Now the question is whether you like this approach or not. I happen to like it.
Dec 16, 2007, 11:39:00 AM
Posted to What flavor of closures?