feature hole theory of design

interesting if not entirely edifying discussion of closures in java, from jag's blog entry titled black hole theory of design. i suppose closures in java would be useful in providing less clumsy functional dispatch mechanisms, but as in ruby and perl et al. the mechanism is just another mechanism, a plangbling, a fan-feature. it will not play a fundamental role, [as suggested by the theory] influencing the other core elements of the language, or its implementation. it is simply too late for that. is it worth its complexity budget? hmm, how else can java possibly compete with gruby?

big shrug...

[oblink: the lambda papers. i thought these would be coming out in a book form, but i have no idea what happened. rpg did not respond...]