Why Java Won't Have Macros

bugbear writes "Carlos Perez has just posted a page that quotes Sun Java 'theologist' Gilad Bracha about why there is no plan to add macros (in the Lisp sense) to Java."

Comments

Interesting point.

[alyosha1]

The single best measure of whether a programming language is worth using is: how well does it support communities.

This point doesn't seem to get raised very often when comparing the relative merits of language A against language B. It's easy to forget that while a language is a tool for communicating with a computer, it is also (and arguably more importantly) a tool for communicating with other programmers.

Which is why Python is rapidly becoming my favourite language. I find other people's python code far easier to understand than stuff written in other languages. This despite the fact that I've only been hacking python for a few months, and I've been using C++ and other languages daily for several years.

I feel that there's scope for yet another 'methodology', alongside OO and XP and all that - it might be called 'code as conversation', whereby the quality of a piece of code is judged by how readily it communicates intent to other programmers.

Sigh..

[DrunkBastard]

One less language to be used in obfuscated code contests. Where's the fun without macros and overloading? sigh....

Re:useless

[Elwood P Dowd]

>> if u want the extra performance boost

>Maybe you wouldn't find macros so useless if you created some keyboard macros to replace ' u ' with ' you '.
>
>Just a thought.

Maybe yoyou woyouldn't find macros so youseless if yoyou created some keyboard macros to replace 'you' with 'yoyou'.

Jyoust a thoyought.