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Now I've understood the meaning of "coin" in Project Coin

Posted by fabriziogiudici on November 19, 2009 at 2:45 AM EST
It seems that at Devoxx it has been announced that closures will make their way in Java 7, after all.

I don't want to discuss whether it's a good or a bad thing (you know I think it's bad I suspend any judgment as I understand that the proposal is neither BGGA nor CICE, but something new). I'm only appalled that after a few weeks that the final word of Java 7 had been said with Project Coin (the famous final five or so), somebody changed his mind all of a sudden. What kind of decisional process is this?

Ah, I got it - it's tossing a coin, now I get where the project name came from. I fear Java 7 could be the most chaotical Java release ever - a very good idea if you want to kill it prematurely (as it there weren't already many other sources of entropy, such as the Oracle deal or the Jigsaw / OSGi debate).

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Comments

Why?

by cowwoc - 2009-11-19 12:13

There are so many other feature requests that have more consensus and are better for Java than Closures. Why ram this down our throats now?!

I always thought the "coin"

by liphos - 2009-11-19 07:03

I always thought the "coin" in Project Coin was a pun on "small change" (as in money), because only small changes are made to the language.

The day after, things are

by fabriziogiudici - 2009-11-19 05:18

The day after, things are more clear, thanks to a few discussions in the mailing list, with information coming mostly from Mark's BoF. The basic point is that the release of JDK 7 slipped by at least seven months (Feb -> Sep 2010) for external reasons (I suppose the Oracle deal). Given the deadline is slipping, thus also JDK 8 will slip, the guys have reopened the discussion of what can be fit in, as there's more time. This makes definitely sense. I think it has been an episode of unfortunate communication, and a short blog post published at the same time at the speech at Devoxx could have avoided a lot of noise.