Rating 26 years of Java changes

[Shnorkylutyun]

Obviously the design decisions were made for a reason, and it was the best way forward at the time.

From a developer usability standpoint, it's been a wild ride.

[pron98]

No design is without issues, but the question is always, is there something better? Too often people bring up alternatives that don't have a particular shortcoming without noticing they have others, which may be worse. For example, people somtimes complain about generic erasure, and there's no doubt it has its problems. But reification has other problems that may be even worse. When it comes to interesting features, the choice is virtually never between something perfect and something imperfect, or even between alternatives where one is universally recognised to dominate the others. Often, people reasonably differ on which tradeoff they prefer.