[chrisseaton]

> I have a hard time being too impressed because more modern languages are doing this out of the gates and with far fewer hacks

Well of course - it's easier to build something like this into a clean-slate language isn't it? It's harder to build it into an existing language and VM spec with an incomprehensibly large volume of existing code to be compatible with. It's backwards to say it's not impressive because someone else with zero constraints to work with also managed it.

[clra]

> Well of course - it's easier to build something like this into a clean-slate language isn't it? It's harder to build it into an existing language and VM spec with an incomprehensibly large volume of existing code to be compatible with. It's bizarre to say it's not impressive because someone else with zero constraints to work with also managed it.

I hope my original comment was relatively clear on this, but sure, it's a big accomplishment and will be a quantum leap for the ecosystem. However, given that languages elsewhere have had better systems for quite some time now, it's not like they're advancing the state of the art in dependency management.

But again, it wasn't an easy thing to do (a very hard thing even) and everyone involved deserves major felicitation.

[smallnamespace]

I guess the real question is, why do you find advancing the state of the art to be more impressive or deserving of acclaim than integrating improvements to existing systems?

Both activities seem valuable and complementary to me -- there's no point in advancing the frontier if nobody will bother to make those advances practically useful.

[watwut]

They are advancing Java itself. Those who work with Java on large projects (which is the Java use case) will find modules useful. There is huge community around Java and even more people who use it, but don't count itself members of any community.

[vanderZwan]

I think the distinction is GP makes is being impressed by the concept of a module system itself, or by being able to bolt on such a system to an existing language.

A module system in and of itself is not impressive these days. Getting one into Java is.

[coding123]

Can someone with an idea about this post other languages that actually attempt to modulerize it's own API? I'm not aware of any.

[_asummers]

Elixir is an application that runs on the Erlang VM. Libraries can be brought in and started as their own applications, with their own lifecycles. I'm not privy enough in the specifics of the Rust way of things, but it sounds like this is sort of similar if you squint a little bit?

Observer screenshot from a blank IEx session: https://puu.sh/xI3re/3701a0c64e.png