Should we build a superset of Java?

Wed Apr 4 15:12:00 GMT 2001

Quoth Paul Mclachlan on Wednesday, 4 April:
: > Has anyone defined a way GCJ is going to add language extensions this in the
: > future? Remember we don't have a standards committee :)
:: I would encourage you to -not- do this; at the very least, the Java community
: (myself included) rarely appreciates extensions that will stop your code being
: portable between implementations. 

I have no cred to speak to this issue, but can't resist.
I would suggest as one standard for acceptability of a proposed
language extension, that any code offered should support a switch,
like -ansi -pedantic, which is no more lax in it's application of the
syntactic constraints of the historical portable Java language than is
gcj without the proposed enhancement (preferrably, more rigorous).
Generic Java has some nice stuff. I'd like to see transparent RMI a
la style du JavaParty. AspectJ might be interesting too. (I wish I
knew more about it.) Given that we can avoid any degradation in the
ability to enforce portable style, I see no reason not to exercise
some leadership and provide a friendly playing field for
experimentation -- other than the usual stability and maintainability
issues, which must be accommodated.