Eclipse introduces Xtend - syntax sugar for Java

[sproingie]

A default return type of void isn't so bad.  Unless they went for full-blown type inference and not just local (even scala just does local) I expect it requires return types for everything else?  It's nice to have return types explicit, but it's all statically compiled, so it's not like you can compile bad code based on that confusion.

Multiple dispatch is crazy awesome, but that's a *major* language feature that completely changes the syntax and semantics of method definitions and calls, and isn't something easily bolted on.  If it's just syntax sugar for double-dispatch, that's not nearly as interesting.

[gimbal]

This is not the only effort to "replace" Java. There is also Ceylon.

http://planet.jboss.org/post/introduction_to_ceylon_part_1

Me personally I don't understand what people have to moan about Java. It saved me incredible amounts of development time 8 years ago, it still does today. Switching to a language with more syntactic bells and whistles is not going to change any of that because development time is still determined by the complexity of the programming problem at hand, not by which tool you use to solve it. Who cares if I you can save a few keystrokes, most time lost is spent thinking, not typing :/

[princec]

People trying to replace Java with some funky new syntax keep forgetting why Java was so popular in the first place: it looks just like C/C++. Did I already say that?

Cas

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[Nate]

Change is scary!

[princec]

More like change means learning stuff, and learning stuff means not doing stuff and getting things delivered.

Cas

[Roquen]

Not if one is learning the right stuff for the right problem.