Delete comment from: Neal Gafter's blog
I was shocked to see such an important figure in Java as Joshua Bloch resorting to such dirty tricks. I find most of his arguments, together with code examples, twisted in one way or another. Talk half an hour of anonymous classes and then show the audience a code sample with an anonymous function - it must be a great surprise, when they think it has anonymous class semantics! In reality, programmers that RTFM before touching code will quickly learn to see the difference, it's no rocket science.
No less was I shocked to hear of his concerns for "Programmer Portability", which really means dispensability, and the dangers caused by allowing mere coders to implement their own control structures. It feels almost like these concerns are the true reasons for his opposition to BGGA, and most of the technical arguments are just bluff.
Josh Bloch needs to realize that many smarter and more ambitious programmers don't want to be production line workers, and if you insist on treating them like that, they'll go elsewhere. Look at .NET and its massive shift towards functional-style programming and start thinking.
Jan 3, 2008, 4:56:00 PM
Posted to What flavor of closures?