> Well, good proposal. Closures are necessary in > programming. But Java is getting bloated...perhaps a new > language should emerge, one that's based on functional > programming but with enough freedom to easily do things?
I don't think it's an either-or choice. I was skeptical of adding closures to Java at this late date in the language's history, but was impressed with Neal's presentation at JavaPolis. Even though I did read the first version of their proposed spec, I didn't quite have time to study it enough to grok it deeply. Once I saw his presentation and got to ask him questions afterwords, I quite liked their proposal.
I think we should continue to try and improve Java as much as is possible at this point. I know that each thing you add adds bloat, increases surface area, so the benefit of each new feature has to outweigh the cost of added bloat. But the closures proposal I think shows it is still possible to make enhancements where the benefit outweighs the cost. I and a lot of other people will be using Java for a long time to come, and I don't think Java is good enough to freeze it at this point.
On the other hand, I also think it would be a good to foster and nourish the growth and acceptance of other languages on the JVM, and let the market decide which ones should "win." Having a stable Java might make it a bit easier for other languages to integrate nicely with Java, but still, on the whole I hope we can do a few more things to Java to ease existing pain points when programming in Java.
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