Women in Technology

Article:		Readable Java 1.5
Subject:		interesting, but...
Date:		2003-09-29 15:26:12
From:		anonymous2
Response to: interesting, but...
I tend to think that clearer syntax is much more important than the difficulty of writing the compiler. After all, many more people write Java code than write Java compilers. Is this one of the major reasons Sun did not want to use the "in" keyword? Of course, I am not planning on ever writing a Java 1.5 compiler. Thanks for the article, I really enjoyed it.

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• interesting, but...
  2003-12-20 06:54:24  anonymous2 [View]
  
  
  Java's keywords are reserved -- you can't
  use any of the keywords as variables or
  method names. Making an exception for "in"
  isn't just a matter of making it "difficult"
  to write the compiler, it's a radical change
  in the language structure that would require
  the lexer to be context-sensitive. Sun would
  (justifiably) never ever make such a change, so
  it's pointless to debate the value of an "in" keyword.
  
  Someone suggested "from". "of" is another
  possibility. But it's not like Sun didn't
  consider these -- they almost certainly did,
  and rejected them because there may be programs
  that use them as variable names. Thus, they
  chose the ":" syntax, and it's very unlikely
  that they're about to change their minds.