I think that, in principle, Java could be extended in interesting ways and could take cues from other languages (including, sure, C#), but lately I'm tending to agree with Josh Bloch that Java's complexity budget is used up. Every change at this point seems to imply a great risk to instability (or unexpected side-effects) somewhere else in the language or the library ecosystem.
Another issue--and I'm not sure how MS addresses this--is that it's becoming very hard for any new proposal for changes to the language to gain much traction at this point; there's too much disagreement on each proposal (including, in the last year+, both properties and closures) and that makes it hard to build any real consensus. A lot of anger comes up in these discussions, and there are certainly those who would like to roll the releases back to 1.4, as well as those who would like Java the language to move forward aggressively. These people simply aren't finding common ground. So my guess is, Sun would have to try and "pull a JCP" and just dictate what the changes would be. But then, look at how much controversy Java 5 caused, for example; I think they just don't want to go through that again. It may be more realistic to freeze Java-the-language in the near future, and see what other language (perhaps on the JVM, for those of us who like the ecology around it) can build out in new directions without a lot of baggage to answer for. Java will continue to be used for a long time, and people will just continue to live with its limitations, methinks. Regards Patrick --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "The Java Posse" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/javaposse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
