Strange. Every time we talk about features and what other languages have, you always come up with "lesser languages" and "hoarders".
When Java ends up adopting those features, suddenly it's "we accommodate a non-minority number of developers" and "we've been thinking about this since before Java was released".
> My definition isn't ever-changing, it's just relative.
Yup.
> illy to suggest we should change it because languages that aren't doing as well have a different strategy.
...aaand there it is again. "The lesser languages".
Anyway. I'm glad it seems you're in the minority seeing how Java has picked up its development pace. Hopefully it will only accelerate and adopt more features for "non-minority number of developers we've been thinking since before 1991".
Adieu.
It's not those features, though! Obviously, a hoarder has everything, so anything you buy is something he has. We are adopting a small portion of the features that feature-rich languages have, which is exactly the difference between a more feature-rich language and a more minimal one.
> "The lesser languages".
I never said "lesser languages"; you said it. I said "less successful languages". You're arguing with things I haven't said, and even when you quote me, you misquote me to completely change my meaning. No one, on the Java team or outside it, considers Lisp, Smalltalk, and ML - the languages that inspired Java - "lesser" languages. They are, however, all less successful languages as a matter of fact. It is because they are not lesser but they are less successful that we selectively adopt a portion of their ideas but do not adopt their strategy.
> When Java ends up adopting those features, suddenly it's "we accommodate a non-minority number of developers" and "we've been thinking about this since before Java was released".
No, we've also been thinking about features that may well probably never make it. I'm not even sure what you're trying to say, but you should know that anyone who works in language design has been familiar with type inference, generics, typed lambdas, pattern matching, and algebraic data types at least since the late eighties because ML has been the biggest single influence on language designers and other PL fans in the past couple of decades (ML was released in the early seventies, but it didn't become so influential right away).
> I'm glad it seems you're in the minority seeing how Java has picked up its development pace.
Java has picked up its development pace compared to the time we were involuntarily stagnant due to declining investment from our corporate overlords. As always, most of the development is in the runtime, as that has always been our strategy, and we all think it's a good one. I'm very happy that we can do more now than we could fifteen years ago, but the Java language won't become a (relatively) feature-rich language, even though it will continue to add features.