The Former Weblog of Peter Ahé

I got a few questions from a reporter on the Kitchen Sink Language. He wanted to know what prompted me to start the project and what my goal is. Here is my reply:

The Java™ programming language is defined by the JCP. This is a good thing as it ensures that the entire community is heard. We should also be conservative when selecting which features are added to the language. Otherwise, the language may become a mess. This was explained in Evolving the Java Language by Bracha, Hamilton, and Reinhold.

We want the main branch of javac to be stable and primarily focus on implementing approved features. On the other hand, we must experiment and have fun to get a feel for new language features. Most people seems prefer evaluating new language proposals by using them on their own code, rather than reading abstract specifications and proposals.

As you may know, I'm the Java compiler (javac) tech lead. I see a lot of proposal for enhancing the language and our team has to turn down most. So how can we experiment? James solution is the Kitchen Sink Language which will be a forum for trying out crazy (and not so crazy) ideas for language enhancements.

Over the winter holidays, Rémi Forax implemented two different proposals for language enhancements. This is exactly the kind of community James and I would like to encourage so we were happy to see Rémi's work. On the compiler-dev mailing list, Rémi's work prompted Ted Neward to suggest that we do something to coordinate future experimental features. So I felt this was the right time to implement James' idea.

Now it is time for me to create a vendor branch so we can start experimenting.