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Date: Thu, 12 May 2011 08:13:13 -0700
From: Patricia Shanahan <pats@acm.org>
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Subject: Re: Java puzzler
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On 5/12/2011 5:35 AM, Lew wrote:
...
> Telling yourself that Lew has a "magical ability" is a foolish fiction.
> I just am not lazy about the JLS. Maybe Patricia has one; I can believe
> that. Not me. I'm smart, but the key is I'M AT LEAST TRYING!

I'm not a useful data point for this discussion. The writers of the JLS
benefited from the multiple decades of language specification writing
the preceded it. For example, the syntax notation is a descendant of the
BNF notation in the Algol 60 report.

Before I started learning Java I had a combination of formal education
and practical, on-the-job experience in reading and applying programming
language specifications. When I started reading the JLS it was just a
new instance of a familiar type of document.

There is no way for any of us, myself included, to know how easy or
difficult I would have found the JLS if I had read it without that
background.

Patricia