Re: Rather, DSSLs increase modularity, productivity

[Daniel Weinreb <address@hidden>]

Miles Egan wrote:

>On Sun, 2003-11-16 at 19:43, Michael Vanier wrote:
>  
>
>>Java, whatever else one might say about it, has removed item (2) from
>>consideration for most programmers.  Item (1) is still a factor, and I must
>>say I prefer a more interactive programming environment than java usually
>>provides.  But that has little to do with type systems, I think.
>>    
>>
>
>I think it's interesting that almost all of the radical changes made to
>Java since its inception (reflection, generics, byte-code manipulation,
>anonymous classes, third party scripting systems) seem to have been made
>in an effort to loosen the type system or circumvent it entirely.  Java
>programmers don't seem ready to abandon the type system completely, but
>some things seem to be next to impossible to do without deeper
>metaprogramming than the core language allows.
>
Anonymous classes don't loosen or circumvent the type system in any 
way.  Byte-code
manipulation isn't part of the language and could be done from day 1.  
Generics are
indeed a way to improve the type system, but I would say they are to 
"tighten" it rather
than loosen it.  Use of reflection to circumvent the type system is not 
considered
appropriate and is certainly not the reason that reflection was introduced.

Saying "Java programmers don't seem ready to abandon the type system 
completely"
seems to imply that Java programmers are close to ready to abandon the 
type system.
I haven't seen evidence of this.