Neal Gafter has posted the first closures puzzler. I guess the second edition of Java Puzzlers is in works, and closures will be a hefty addition to the book. If anything, this makes me really sad.

I was very excited to lay my hands on the first edition, but after reading through a few chapters, i skimmed the table of contents, glanced at the visual illusions and never came back to it. If i had to sum this book in one sentence, it would be "great optical illusions and irrelevant content". I know, this is a harsh statement, and i have nothing but respect to both authors (in fact, i consider "Effective Java" to be the book that i would take with me to a deserted island on a condition that it has WiFi access).

I've been using Java for the last 8 years, most of it exclusively (amounting to about 10-12 hours a day, including the work and the side projects). I've written my share of new code, and i most certainly have seen my share of old code that i had to maintain, fix and extend. But never once have i encountered anything even remotely connected to any Java puzzler presented in the book and at the conferences.

Bit-level shifts, integer overflows, overloaded methods, reflection, generics - you name it. I've looked at the examples, i've tried to match them to the real code that i see during the day, and i have found nothing. Of course, i am looking at the tiniest sliver of Java code that exists in the enterprise sector, but somehow i get an impression that i'm not alone. I would even go as far as to say that a feature implemented in a way that results in at least one puzzler is not a feature worth having in the language.

Which brings me to the quote of the day. It comes from an announcement on the end-of-life for Ruby.NET:

As a researcher, my prime interest is not in developing products, but in developing innovative new ideas and having an impact by having those ideas used in the real world.

The generics were added to the language in a very incomplete manner, mainly due to the restrictions on binary compatibility. If we let the researchers in us (even if they are the best researchers) to do the same with closures, i'll pass.