[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.