Not sure who you're saying is a pedant in this conversation, but I would have to say that despite Java's closures not being really closures, people do use them quite a bit. See the style of GWT API and Guava for a few good examples. Alexey
________________________________ From: phil swenson <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 9:47 PM Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] Re: Java Has Always Had Closures http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedantic Java doesn't have closures in the way most people think of closures. It has closures in a half-assed, un-friendly way. So people don't use them much and in effect, Java doesn't have closures. On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 5:59 PM, Alexey Zinger <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't wanna argue semantics. That said, what we're getting in Java 8 > isn't true closures. The important distinction is that we don't get full > execution flow control. All we get is, as you said, syntactic > niceties. Now, the syntactic niceties are, of course, nice. And I'm not a > language zealot and therefore will not jump off a cliff because Java doesn't > have "true" closures. But in the real sense of the word, it doesn't. > > Alexey > > > ________________________________ > From: Cédric Beust ♔ <[email protected]> > To: [email protected] > Sent: Monday, September 12, 2011 4:05 PM > Subject: Re: [The Java Posse] Re: Java Has Always Had Closures > > On Mon, Sep 12, 2011 at 12:55 PM, Ben Schulz <[email protected]> wrote: > > On 12 Sep., 21:32, clay <[email protected]> wrote: >> A closure is when you define a function that "closes" over the local >> environment from which the new function is defined and can access >> local variables of that defining scope. > Not just local variables, anything denotable from the enclosing scope, > such as the method equals(Object), which happens to have a different > meaning inside the "closure" than outside. This is a contradiction of > your very definition ("a closure is a function which closes over the > [lexically enclosing] environment") and thus disproves your > hypothesis. > q.e.d. > > Technically true but practically irrelevant. > Jave has indeed had closures since day one (e.g. Runnable, Callable, > etc...). If you're not convinced, ask yourself the following question: is > there any programming construct that you will be able to do in Java 8 with > closure support that you can't do today with Runnable? > None. > The syntax will be nicer, but that's all Java 8 is adding in that area. > -- > Cédric > > -- > 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. > > > -- > 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. > -- 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. -- 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.
