Path: csiph.com!usenet.pasdenom.info!weretis.net!feeder4.news.weretis.net!eternal-september.org!feeder.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Joshua Cranmer Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: refactoring problem Date: Tue, 05 Feb 2013 10:04:11 -0600 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 45 Message-ID: References: <7fssg8dakvofmv6pk3sfvp5jmaku55vgmm@4ax.com> <510ea8de$0$284$14726298@news.sunsite.dk> <510fa7c1$0$6978$e4fe514c@news2.news.xs4all.nl> <0453206c-7053-4cf0-8ab2-b6c5e817a69a@googlegroups.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Tue, 5 Feb 2013 16:03:48 +0000 (UTC) Injection-Info: mx05.eternal-september.org; posting-host="95ab4c362dcce54022543f80bbbb46d3"; logging-data="31370"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+ZlFytJvfCObgoaDhUtFIjXpKjgwucQ2Y=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:17.0) Gecko/20130107 Thunderbird/17.0.2 In-Reply-To: <0453206c-7053-4cf0-8ab2-b6c5e817a69a@googlegroups.com> Cancel-Lock: sha1:v0BTEC5B99pXRc6pyu+/bVWu3dc= Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:22115 On 2/4/2013 2:35 PM, Lew wrote: > Silvio wrote: >> parameters. Nothing very dramatic that could not be added to the >> Java compiler if so desired. > > People are never satisfied. They wanted delegates, didn't get them, > never mind Java got another way to do the same thing. Then they > wanted generics, and sorta got them. Then they wanted runtime > generics and didn't get them, never mind Java already had another way > to do the same thing. Then they wanted closures, and sorta got them, > never mind Java already had another way to do the same thing. Now > they want tuples, never mind that Java already has another way to do > the same thing. > > "Oh, it's just one more little thing!" they always exclaim. For a > thousand little things. > > This is what happened to C++. > > Java will get all these things and the programming community will > abandon the language, bitching that it's gotten too "heavy". For what it's worth, I would say the biggest mistake that Java made was in the exclusion of unsigned integer types, or, most perniciously, the decision to make the byte datatype be signed. That doesn't necessarily mean I would want to see it changed at this point, however. Java is its own programming language, and the fact that you can't program in it like you can in $LANGUAGE should be considered a feature, not a bug. > The argument "it's just one little change" is a well-known lie. It's > how customers eat up the profit margin for custom software. One thing > and another and another and another and another and the game is how > long you can say, "I'm only just going to take Poland, nothing else" > before people realize I just incurred Godwin's Law. I think it might be worth filtering out feature requests by asking requestors to list at least one drawback of including their feature. If they can't think of any, then they are going to be totally clueless about how easy or hard a feature is to implement. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth