Weiqi Gao's Observations - microsoft tag

Neal Gafter: Block Expressions For Java

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 01:55:55 GMT

(Via The Java Posse Google Group (Via Twitter))

Neal Gafter: A parenthesized expression can now contain additional statements, for example declarations of temporary local variables to avoid recomputing a value used only within the expression. This feature is especially useful in machine-generated code.

A simple example:

double pi2 = (double pi = Math.PI ; pi*pi);

This is comparable to the equivalent JavaFX Script:

var pi2 = {var pi = Math.PI; pi*pi};

The proposal sounds like it should be eligible for Project Coin.

But will the Java community accept language proposals from a Microsoft employee (where Neal now works.)?

Oh, wait. Java did it once already: auto-boxing, annotations, and enums.

Curious Development: Microsoft Joins...

Thu, 06 Nov 2008 13:24:11 GMT

... the AMQP Working Group.

(Via INfoQ.)

Microsoft Press Release, Oct. 24, 2008: Microsoft Corp. today announced that it is joining the Advanced Message Queuing Protocol (AMQP) Working Group...

Given that the goal of AMQP is to commodities message queuing products by standardizing on a wire protocol and a programming model, and that 29 months after the original announcement (as I reported 870 days ago) of the intent to publish AMQP 1.0 within 18 months, AMQP 1.0 hasn't been finalized, I believe this move by Microsoft, a proprietary messaging product vendor, means only one thing:

(I'm drawing a blank. Help me, internet!)...

This much is clear, with Microsoft in, IBM will have to join. And you know what results when Microsoft and IBM collaborate!

Microsoft: Closures And The Java VM

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 01:45:43 GMT

(Via Clojure Google Group.)

In light of the news from yesterday, one shouldn't be shocked too much by this. Yet I find myself stunned by the following visual:

Also, check out the blogroll at http://gafter.blogspot.com/ (at least until it is further updated).