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Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

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Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#31

Post by philf »

nyellin wrote: post #14

Parenthesis for method invocations are optional, if the method does not take any arguments. obj.compute instead of obj.compute() That seems silly. The optional semicolons also irritate me. ----------------- (Added) I imagine a committee of Java developers, in a penthouse boardroom at Oracle, meeting with management to discuss Java's descent into disuse. "Lets make Java more concise," suggests a senior developer. "Yes…

Talking about cargo cult, they added "def" to function definitions making it more verbose actually.

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#32

Post by swombat »

mbreese wrote: post #29

You know that when even Eclipse is coming out with an updated JVM/Java.next language that Java proper has some major issues.

Are you implying that there was still someone on our side of the 50th percentile of programmers who didn't know that?

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#33

Post by Roybatty »

phzbOx wrote: post #7

So, "Extend is for the Java Programmer". I'm curious to see how this will turn out as there are some pretty cool features in this language. (Particularly the multiple dispatch, closures and type inference). However, any Java programmers could have made the switch to Clojure or Scala to keep working with the JVM. But, Extend is different in that it generates Java code instead of JVM. So, I'm wondering who will use tha…

" However, any Java programmers could have made the switch to Clojure or Scala to keep working with the JVM"

Clojure is a nonstarter for the vast majority of Java programmers for obvious reasons, and Scala has a perception problem.

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#34

Post by dustingetz »

scala's own evangelists are worried that scala won't overtake java: "...Scala (the language, the tool-chain, the ecosystem, nothing about Scala) is not mature enough to be a Java replacement and barring an order of magnitude or two more investment into Scala commercialization, I don't see Scala becoming a Java replacement"[1]. this is despite seeing twitter and foursquare adopt scala at scale. and Scala's team, Odersky et al, are credible. they've already been through the extend java approach[2]. it didn't work. i see no reason xtend will be any different.

  [1] http://www.infoq.com/articles/barriers-to-scala-adoption
  [2] http://www.artima.com/scalazine/articles/origins_of_scala.html
anyway, i think the biggest problems with java are lack of first class functions, and no tools to enforce or nudge towards referential transparency. If Xtend helps with this, their page sucks because i skimmed it and i can't tell. verbosity and syntactic sugar seems to be the focus and incremental improvements typically aren't worth the inherent risk of changing pieces of our stack.

edit: xtend does seem to have first class functions per below, so my argument is weakened. i'll leave this post for discussion though since its going through some pretty wild vote swings.

  val predicate = [ Person person | "Hans" == person.name ]
  persons.filter(predicate)

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#35

Post by barrkel »

nyellin wrote: post #14

Parenthesis for method invocations are optional, if the method does not take any arguments. obj.compute instead of obj.compute() That seems silly. The optional semicolons also irritate me. ----------------- (Added) I imagine a committee of Java developers, in a penthouse boardroom at Oracle, meeting with management to discuss Java's descent into disuse. "Lets make Java more concise," suggests a senior developer. "Yes…

This feature, which Delphi has, can be problematic - if you're assigning a method to a method reference variable, it's not always clear if you intend to assign the method itself, or the return value of the method (which may itself be a method reference).

Of course, Java doesn't have method reference types. But it's an ambiguity worth bearing in mind.

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#37

Post by nolok »

maximusprime wrote: post #23
nyellin wrote: post #14

Parenthesis for method invocations are optional, if the method does not take any arguments. obj.compute instead of obj.compute() That seems silly. The optional semicolons also irritate me. ----------------- (Added) I imagine a committee of Java developers, in a penthouse boardroom at Oracle, meeting with management to discuss Java's descent into disuse. "Lets make Java more concise," suggests a senior developer. "Yes…

It's pandering to hipsters. Parenthesis are just to obvious .

Optional parenthesis if no argument is given was already a feature of at least pascal in the seventies.

All those new "cool and innovative" languages are just rediscovering it after almost a decade of everything with C syntax.

Not that it's bad or anything, it's just my OCD tingling.

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#38

Post by DanielRibeiro »

lemming wrote: post #13
hopeless wrote: post #5

Oh, it looks like Xtend is to Java as Coffeescript is to Javascript. Although I'm sceptical about it compiling to Java source. Java seems to be going through a period of experimentation, and alternative Java-like and JVM languages. Interesting times.

One of the nice things about compiling to Java source is that it allows you use it with GWT. The only downside that I can see is that there might be constructs that you can't express in Java that you would want in a new language (note that you're fine with ones that you can technically express in Java but are just ugly, like closures). There are probably not very many of them, though.

Well, scala can be used with gwt: https://github.com/scalagwt

It was documented on scala, page, but now you have to use the google cache to see this: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:wqqu7uQ...

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#39

Post by eitland »

mbreese wrote: post #29

You know that when even Eclipse is coming out with an updated JVM/Java.next language that Java proper has some major issues.

The biggest issues are less about syntax and more about having to restart containers etc again and again.

But everyone except Play! and a few others seems to be jumping the new syntax bandwagon.

Being a php/python/Java developer I'm afraid I'd trade all improvements after generics for a no restart required jvm

Re: Eclipse launches new language to cut down Java boilerplate - Extend

#40

Post by DanielRibeiro »

nolok wrote: post #37
maximusprime wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pandering to hipsters. Parenthesis are just to obvious .

Optional parenthesis if no argument is given was already a feature of at least pascal in the seventies. All those new "cool and innovative" languages are just rediscovering it after almost a decade of everything with C syntax. Not that it's bad or anything, it's just my OCD tingling.

Well, Ruby does go beyond this: optional parenthesis with or without arguments. Of course, no public instance variables, like Smalltalk and Scala, makes this possible.
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