On 20/05/2021 08:35, dfranken....@gmail.com wrote:
I also think the proposal of Stuart is reasonable though, but it seemed to me that we had reached some sort of impasse in this discussion. As Remi points out, we have (default) methods which sometimes throw exceptions when they are implemented to signify they don't actually implement the given feature, but we also have interfaces which add new methods. So any choice we make here seems to be inconsistent with some choice we made in the past, but such is the nature of software development I guess.
I think progress is still possible. The discussion has shown some alternatives which are not better than new ReversibleCollection/ReversibleSet types. The discussion has raised some concerns about compatibility but they are not to hard to overcome (mostly just source-level). There is clearly a benefit from new types although migration to use them will not be fast. But it might be faster than we are used to. The most difficult was (and for some still is) a JDK 8 -> JDK 9 jump, but once you are on JDK 9+ it is relatively easy to follow latest JDK release. With LTS JDK 17 around the corner, I expect most production code which now runs on JDK 11 will relatively quickly migrate to JDK 17 just for improvements in JVM/GC if not for Language/APIs. I think adding these types will surely trigger some disturbance but nothing major.
Peter
