Subject:	Scala, JRuby, Groovy, Scheme, F3 ...
	Date:	2007-02-02 05:41:10
	From:	simonreid
Response to: Scala, JRuby, Groovy, Scheme, F3 ...
I apologize for my poorly worded comment. I do realize that: 1) Closures are a completely separate issue from static -v- dynamic typing. 2) A Java without strong and static typing would simply not be Java. What I really should have said was: I don't want to see features from other languages - be they dynamic (Ruby, Groovy), static (C#) or otherwise (SQL) - bolted onto Java in an unsympathetic manner. Also I don't want to see Java's syntax relaxed for the sake of convenience. For me, these would make doing things in Java in the most simple, robust, consistant, secure and performant way, less intuitive. In general, it might be safer to let Java be Java and let new languages provide new features ... I feel this way because I was disappointed by the compile-time only implementation of Generics - the added complexity did not seem worth it due to the compromises made. So I wonder how well other new features can be retrofitted into Java when breaking backward-compatibility is not an option ... Regarding Closures: I wish they had been in Java from the start - they would have been much neater and much more powerful than Inner Classes ... if they can be implemented without introducing unintutive special cases, then I hope they make it into Java 7 ... though I would regret that Java would become less TOOWTDI because Inner Classes can be used (less neatly) in places where it would be be neater to use Closures ... To end with unambiguously positive note: with Sun's Java going GPL and the growing support of "Non-Java" languages on the JVM, this feels like really exciting time for the Java Platform ...