Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!news.swapon.de!fu-berlin.de!uni-berlin.de!individual.net!not-for-mail From: Chris Riesbeck Newsgroups: comp.lang.java.programmer Subject: Re: Sidetrack on generics (WAS: Re: are lambdas a way to bring functional programming to java?) Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 12:01:50 -0500 Lines: 34 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: individual.net TgbvWUSvFuJlAcf1kMP3egFoGV43aGraJQ8L/J0ZQoWY2N6h6n Cancel-Lock: sha1:DgxpIyxITbzIxzDU8rmCN/9LTVM= User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0 In-Reply-To: Xref: csiph.com comp.lang.java.programmer:29240 On 7/22/2014 1:48 PM, Daniele Futtorovic wrote: > On 2014-07-22 19:39, markspace allegedly wrote: >> On 7/22/2014 5:37 AM, Jan Burse wrote: >>> markspace schrieb: >>>> >>>> I think people see something weird in Java that they don't understand, >>>> and they immediately think "it's generics again." Generics had some >>>> really unfortunate consequences, especially in the long run, that I >>>> don't think the expert group foresaw or completely understood. (In >>>> their defense, I'm sure they did as good as a job as possible at the >>>> time.) >>> >>> Small question: What unfortunate consequence in respect to >>> generics are people usually refering to? I hear something >>> similar yesterday. >> >> >> Oh god, where's my list? >> >> The main issue, for me, is that generics are non-reifiable. The entire >> generics system is a fiction maintained by the compiler only, and not >> accessible to the runtime JVM.... > > This is all very true. But it being said, I don't think it's a bad thing > it went down like this. I appreciate the restraint with which they > introduced them in the Java language; a restraint which arguably is the > cause of many of the problems you cite. I appreciate the conservatism > and caring caution with which they treat the towering edifice that is > the Java world in general.... My feelings as well. Java with generics has problems but it's better than Java without generics, and better than an incompatible Java with better generics.