On Sep 15, 11:28 pm, Bob Lee <[email protected]> wrote: > > I don't know where multicatch stands. You'll have to ask Neal and Joe. If > it's out, I'm sure there's a good reason. >
That's the crux of the situation, isn't it? Where's that reason? We keep coming back again and again to the exact same point: If multi-catch doesn't make it and the explanation is not publically known, that's going to put a real crimp on community effort for future coin endeavours. We're all aware this is a perception issue and yet nobody is addressing this perception at all: If there's a good reason for multicatch to get canned, then where is it? That one-liner of: "Messes with the typesystem" is crud - the proposal specifically mentioned why it does not in fact require messing with the type system. Something like "We're going to revisit a lot of types in JDK8, and we may introduce disjoint types, so we're going to wait as we may solve it and many others in one fell swoop in JDK8" would help with _perception_. Which is what the community you want input from is asking for. We're trying to help by explaining why the community is not responding the way Joe had hoped for, and is instead moving towards things like lombok. In regards to the coin form: You didn't answer my question, Joe, you just went on the defense. Why not accept proposals based on less officious bits and more useful bits, and make decisions earlier? You yourself said string switch took you 8+ hours to write up including feedback. You're the coin lead, you knew it had a good chance of making it. You're a JLS and langtools expert. You know exactly what you want from the proposal. The people you want input from would have needed 24 full hours or more, and would instead have the knowledge that the effort has at best slim chances of making it in. Why are you surprised the community isn't putting in as many proposals as you wanted? Putting in that much effort writing excruciatingly boring JLS spec with virtually no guarantee is of course not going to find many takers. If you up the odds considerably by asking people to put in the JLS efforts ONLY after giving them a tentative guarantee that if the work is done and no surprises crop up, the proposal will far more likely be in than be left out, *I* would definitely be a lot more jazzed to put in that effort. I'm making a guesstimate that the rest of the community would be similarly willing to do so. I'll give you an example. here's strings in switch, again, this time in 10 minutes, and this time with the -exact- same ability to make a _preliminary_ call on its feasibility and suitability for java: "The strings in switch proposal allows using strings in switches. The target strings, mentioned in the case statements, must be compile-time constants. Such a construct is translated to existing valid java code as such: Each target string is hashed, and the switch is replaced with an integer switch on the input string's hashCode. Each 'case' label contains 1 if(equals) block comparing the input string to the constant for each string that matches that hashcode, closing with an else that jumps to the default." Add a small paragraph with a syntax example and a hint about how the existing javac grammar can easily be changed to accomodate it, and you've got all you need to make a preliminary call. (I know that's not how you've written up string, but exact implementation is irrelevant at the decision stage of the process, as long as its obvious it won't be particularly difficult to find a workable one). Every other bit (and more) on the coin form eventually becomes relevant, but please, pretty please, with sugar on top, start including the decision process into the iterative process, instead of asking everybody to iterate their way to loads of personal time before eliminating all that hard work in one fell swoop by simply not listing it on the shortlist. I can guarantee you more involvement from me, and if I'm getting the pulse of this thread's participants right, I won't be the only one. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ 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 -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
