Joshua Bloch -- Strangeness of Java

[Lew]

I think the weirdest thing in Java is inner classes.

I *like* inner classes.

 

[Lew]

Really? They don't come out and say "We're rejecting this solution
for legal and marketing reasons?" Surely you jest.

Haha.

My point was that they provide lots of reasons that don't require an ulterior
marketing motive to explain them.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

C# had Java's mistakes to learn from; Java didn't.

True.

Arne

 

[Mike Schilling]

Haha.

My point was that they provide lots of reasons that don't require an
ulterior marketing motive to explain them.

Smart prople can rationalize anything.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

They must have thought so, to say:

The examples they give of delegate syntax are many times
more complex than the actual syntax used in C# today.

It is easy to prove ones solution is good if one compare
to a non optimal implementation of the alternative.

Arne

 

[Lew]

Smart prople can rationalize anything.

Including imputation of ulterior motives.

 

[Mike Schilling]

Including imputation of ulterior motives.

I'm not rationalizing, I'm accusing directly.

 

[Andreas Leitgeb]

Also, the copyright date on the article is 1994-2008, suggesting that at least
some of the discussion must predate the 1997 lawsuit.

The mentioned working prototype, perhaps

 

[Wojtek]

Lew wrote :

I *like* inner classes.

Me too. It lets me organize ownership and fuctionality.

 

[Mike Schilling]

Lew wrote :

Me too. It lets me organize ownership and fuctionality.

I like nesting of classes, but not the implicit "parent" reference. The
fuzziness between things inherited from class ancestry and things inherited
via inclusion bothers me.

 

[Lew]

I like nesting of classes, but not the implicit "parent" reference.  The
fuzziness between things inherited from class ancestry and things inherited
via inclusion bothers me.

That isn't inheritance. It's a misnomer to call it that, or to refer
to the outer reference as a "parent" reference. It's no more a
"parent" reference than it is for any other instance member. If you
declare an intance variable 'foo', the 'this' of 'this.foo' is not a
"parent" reference but the enclosing instance reference. Same thing
with inner classes.

The advantage of access to the *enclosing* instance reference is that
it allows closure-like behavior.