From: "Sandor Szücs" <sandor.szuecs@...>
Date: 2009-03-09T21:17:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby - Imperative Language Features?

On 06.03.2009, at 13:48, Jeff Schwab wrote:

> Robert Klemme wrote:
>> On 06.03.2009 00:28, Sandor Szücs wrote:
>
>>> It's some years ago but as I looked into function parameters in  
>>> Java it
>>> was just a pain to use.
>
> ITYM "lambda expressions," not "function parameters."
>> I'd concede that it is more cumbersome than in Ruby with blocks  
>> because of the limitations (variables used inside the anon class  
>> must be final for example).
>
> Agreed, but Ruby blocks and Java anonymous classes are subtly  
> different things.  Java anonymous classes were meant to be an  
> approximation to closures.
>
> When a closure is called, it still "lives" in the scope that created  
> it.  Java's anonymous classes don't really have access to their  
> parent scopes, but Java fakes it by copying data before the scope  
> goes away. Of course, the copies have to be immutable, or else two  
> AC instances from the same creating scope could tell that they  
> weren't really accessing the same variables.
>
> Ruby blocks are something completely different, but IMO, they're  
> more like closures than Java ACs, because they execute in the scope  
> where they are created.  They're not really lambdas at all, though,  
> because you can't pass them around as objects.  Of course, Ruby also  
> supports real closures, and class Proc fills a similar role to Java  
> ACs.

Thank you both for pointing it out.
It's nice to learn that Java is not as bad as I thought!

Regards, Sandor Szücs
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