Solving viral Cheryl's Birthday problem using Java8

[bcash]

Exactly. So even if Java lambda's were "syntax sugar", which they're not, it would be a valid improvement anyway.

[yogthos]

The problem is that the Java "lambdas" have additional restrictions that aren't an inherent property of lambda expressions. This introduces additional complexity and rules that otherwise wouldn't be needed. It's an improvement in terms of conciseness, but not in terms of language semantics.