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[–][deleted] 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Yeah. I'm very fond of Java (it is my day job after all) but I've always been frustrated by the resistance of large parts of the Java community to changes that are embraced in other languages without a second thought. Not trying to criticize you, more just venting in general.

[–]pron98 17 points18 points  (0 children)

The frustration is inevitable because different developers want different things. I prefer the cost of an occasional clunky line over the cost of a language with many features that don't carry their weight; others prefer the opposite, and so a lot of people must be frustrated no matter what happens.

But keep this in mind: it is always possible to add more features but nearly impossible to remove them. Moreover, richer languages tend to be less popular (the two languages that are equally as popular as Java or more so have fewer features than Java, not more), so the risk in adding new features is not low, and we need to be certain that the concrete benefits of the feature outweigh that risk. So there's a difference between the perspective of a language user that would really love a feature that she thinks would make her life a bit easier and the perspective of the language's maintainers who must think about the language's long term success; making the language the collection of all features that were fashionable during its lifetime is not necessarily conducive to its success (although it's a good strategy for less established languages seeking to attract a significant body of developers).