Path: csiph.com!x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net!usenet.pasdenom.info!gegeweb.org!de-l.enfer-du-nord.net!feeder1.enfer-du-nord.net!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!dedekind.zen.co.uk!zen.net.uk!hamilton.zen.co.uk!prichard.zen.co.uk.POSTED!not-for-mail Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 11:58:49 +0100 From: RedGrittyBrick User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.9.2.18) Gecko/20110616 Thunderbird/3.1.11 MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Arithmetic overflow checking References: <015aeb15-57db-48ab-9cd4-77f8448b632f@w24g2000yqw.googlegroups.com> <1f9c17dltrhlmhifuigoa914477r4rg1e1@4ax.com> <09fe171s46ilvq9qmn254dctunm6noh0ps@4ax.com> <4e262731$0$314$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <4e26300b$0$309$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 17 Message-ID: <4e26b4ed$0$2501$db0fefd9@news.zen.co.uk> Organization: Zen Internet NNTP-Posting-Host: e1ad90da.news.zen.co.uk X-Trace: DXC=KF1?oT`mGbFBXUbIc<\C3B0g@SS;SF6nGRiiCXJE[K>G_0E0m_SQNKJFJPo[XSAIj@UJ[RRN7ESZC X-Complaints-To: abuse@zen.co.uk Xref: x330-a1.tempe.blueboxinc.net comp.lang.java.programmer:6303 On 20/07/2011 11:36, Arved Sandstrom wrote: > Holding back from certain language changes just so someone can > compile a codebase written against Java 5 on a Java 9 compiler, and have > it work, is holding back the entire language. Why is this a problem? Firstly, you can use `javac -source 1.3` to compile old code, can't you? Secondly, a future version of Java could introduce some mechanism such as in-line compiler directives that turn new compiler-behaviours/language-features on for specified classes or for specified sections of code (I'm thinking of Perl's `use feature` pragma but I'm sure this sort of idea exists in other languages). -- RGB