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by MajimasEyepatch 843 days ago
I imagine the lineage here is more Scala than Rust, right? Not that Scala invented these concepts, but if you’re looking for proven features with JVM implementations to add to Java, you’re probably going to look to Scala (and Kotlin) first.
1 comments
vips7L 843 days ago
The OpenJdk team has said multiple times that their inspirations are coming from ML and not Scala or Kotlin.
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MajimasEyepatch 843 days ago
I’m sure that’s true to an extent, but calling your sum types “sealed” is pretty explicitly borrowing from Scala. Which is fine. I think it’s good that they’re pulling inspiration from a bunch of different places.
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norir 843 days ago
This seems hard to believe. If true, it seems very odd that they wouldn't be studying successful languages with enormous real world adoption targeting the same platform as theirs.
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vips7L 843 days ago
To quote Brian Goetz [0], the language architect:

> It is super-common to observe "I saw feature F in language X, then I saw it come to Java, they must have gotten their inspiration from X." And while sometimes this is true, it is far more common that both are drawing inspiration from a common source or literature, sometimes even one that predates either language. (It is also super-easy to confuse "Language X was the first place I saw feature F" with "X invented F.")

Another in reference to getting inspiration from OCaml [1]:

> This is exactly the reaction that I was describing by "might elicit strong reactions from some", which is what I would call a "who moved my cheese" objection. Good, now we've got it out of the way. I had the same concern for the first few seconds after seeing this idea (the inspiration came from work being done in OCaml), but it didn't take much longer to see how it fit into the bigger role of switch.

Another from Ron Pressler [2]:

> Obviously, we do borrow features from less popular languages (primarily ML, which was never popular), but only when we think they're the best way to address a real need of Java's millions of mainstream developers and not just because those languages' self-selecting users love them.

This has all been discussed multiple times on the /r/java subreddit.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/11322uy/jep_draft_imp...

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/18hglp5/effect_cases_...

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/java/comments/18ynhn1/which_kotlin_...

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