Dick, my gut instinct agrees that many small incremental changes is a
better idea than a gaggle all at once, but in practice I wonder if
this is really such a good idea. Imagine the following java 1.4 code:
private final String[] KEY_SERVICES = new String[] { "FACEBOOK",
"MYSPACE", "TWITTER" };
public void initialize() {
for ( int i = 0 ; i < KEY_SERVICES.length ; i++ ) {
registerForService(KEY_SERVICES[i]);
}
}
Let's say that the JVM evolves incrementally as you suggested, and
adds these features, one at a time. Every feature update would
optimally warrant changing the above source code.
- introducing generics: Probably better to turn KEY_SERVICES into an
immutable Arrays.asList() concoction.
- introducing enums: Even better, make this an enum.
- introducing foreach loop: Fix the forloop to loop through the
array / list / enum (whatever it ended up being).
- introducing closures: Turn the forloop into a list/enum.each
(closure).
- introducing the SPI system: Get rid of this entire thing and move
the initialization code into the responsible manager classes.
clearly, revisiting the source code to process every little thing is
going to get annoying fast. For example, fixing your old source code
so you add generics AND fix your for loops to use the new (in java
1.5) foreach syntax works best when you do both of them at the same
time.
Small incremental is great for keeping developers up to date - they
can focus on learning one new thing every 6 months instead of dealing
with generics, foreach loops, annotations, a bunch of new API, and
autoboxing/unboxing at the same time, which is a daunting task, but
for the purposes of fixing up old code, I'm not sure.
It would DEFINITELY help if a new java version also shipped with code
migration tools that basically gave you a wizard prompting you for
every instance in existing code where you should probably rewrite
parts of it, preferably with a suggestion of how to do so. A few
changes (such as foreach) can probably run completely automatically
without even needing you to verify most of the changes it would make.
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