A good way to get an idea of how stupid Java's type system is, is to use a modern Java IDE for a while. Start using IDEA's intention actions, and see just how often IDEA knows what the type of an object is going to be before you bother to assign it a type, or make a cast. Every time you ask the IDE to assign a cast, create a field or iterate over a collection and you select the default value, you're telling the compiler something that IDEA was smart enough to know already.
And with 1.5 and the introduction of generics, the type system is getting even stupider, giving you more and more places where you have to tell the compiler what types to expect because it's too stupid to work it out for itself. Even though the IDEs are smart enough to do this, it's still annoying and disruptive for the programmer to have to make the context switch and alt-enter a cast into place. I'd much prefer Java itself was better able to this sort of stuff itself
In the church of complexity, more is always better...
Previous Topic
