[JSR308] Can we agree on our goals?

[Hani Suleiman]

On Feb 2, 2007, at 8:40 PM, Eugene Kuleshov wrote:

> Hani Suleiman wrote:
>>> Most of the code examples I've seen on this list terrify me.  I'd  
>>> like to see that degree of terror more broadly shared (so far, it  
>>> seems like Ted, Neal, and I are the only ones that have expressed  
>>> their fear).
>> Count me in in the fear category! I'm somewhat dismayed by a good  
>> portion the examples shown actually, very few of which have seemed  
>> like things that a) most people would want to do, and b) most  
>> people CAN do.
>  Not sure what examples are being referred here, I just wanted to  
> point out that there are very valid use cases where there are  
> things people would need or even have to do and right now they just  
> don't have acceptable alternatives.
>
>  Also note that examples are nothing more then just examples and it  
> is completely fine to critique them, but let's keep the critique  
> constructive and find other and better ways to express the such  
> semantics in the Java source code.
>
>  By the way, Hani, you have voted yes for the JSR 308. Have you  
> changed your mind since then?

Of course not! Being concerned is *healthy*, throwing ones hands up  
and giving up (so early in the game too) is not. Specifically:

- Pushing the problem of readability on tooling is not a good  
solution. Sure, IDE's might help, but source files are plaintext ,and  
should be editable and easy to understand as such. So any syntax  
constructs we come up with should take that into consideration. A  
source file that is mostly annotations where the actual code is hard  
to find is a bad thing for Java. Surely we can all agree on that?

- Based on the above, restricting where annotations can be places is  
worth discussing (as we are). I'm on the fence right now with regards  
to allowing it on code blocks. I can see the benefits, but worry  
about the clutter. It's even debatable whether it should be allowed  
on loops, given that forcing a block onto a loop to annotate it seems  
somewhat awkward.