In a previous weblog a suggestion for reifying lambda types was given. The previous weblog give examples but no formal description of the process. This weblog gives a more formal description.

Recently, at Devoxx, it was announced that Java would get lambda functions (a.k.a. anonymous functions or closures). There are many ways of implementing these on the JVM. This post proposes that reifying lambdas is a good choice.

Java has many traditional control structures, like if and for. There are also proposals, BGGA, JCA, and ARM, to add more. This post examines what new structures might be of interest and suggests that more traditional control structures would add little and instead parallel-functional structures would be more useful.

Many people have written that generics in Java are too complicated, this blog examines a simplification — the elimination of wildcards.

The Closure proposal from Neal Gafter et al. introduces something that is like an object, a closure, but not quite. To enable interoperation with normal objects a form of autoboxing is used, this autoboxing has two forms, normal closure conversion and restricted closure conversion. This blog examines an alternative.

There is a lot of interest currently in the ability to extend a class (or something close to class extension) without requiring recompilation or source changes, Traits offer a viable method of achieving this.

Two Java 7 proposed extensions, extension methods and chained invocations, give extra meaning to method call syntax. Neither proposal has proved popular with bloggers and this blog suggests an alternative.

One of the key differences between the different Java inner class and closure proposals is the lexical scope of names, this blog compares the scoping of the major proposals (CICE + ARM, C3S, FCM + JCA, and BGGA in both its forms)

Neil Gafter has proposed Super Type Tokens and also noted their limitations. Alternatives include reify generics and providing generic factories. Super Type Tokens are a means of remembering the erased type using a token, which is an instance of TypeRef in the example.

There are at least 4 inner class/closure proposals for Java 7 and it is hard to compare them because they use different terms and different syntax for similar concepts. This post makes the comparison easier by seperating concerns.

Many people think that inner classes in Java could be better; this Blog presents a new syntax that emphasizes Clarity, Consistency, and Conciseness (in that order!). An example usage is: withLock lock, method { out.println "Hello" };

One of the areas receiving a lot of attention for J7 is simplifying and extending the capabilities of inner classes or adding a new construct the closure. This blog examines the options and compares the different proposals using a typical example, inject.