Re:JDK 8 calendar builder
by mythz on Sunday May 26, 2013 @12:49PM
(#5771571)
A good example of bloatware encouraged by a non-expressive language. Instead of adding a language feature that makes constructing any instance easier, in 2013 they're adding support for a builder on a single Calendar class.
For a similar API in C# you could use named parameters:
or just set public properties in an object initializer:
Likewise in Dart with named parameters:
or using method cascades:
For C#, Dart you get this for free when constructing any object. Java requires creating the boilerplate of a builder for every class?? and with all that effort it's still more verbose.
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Method cascades do not guarantee that the object gets properly initialized. Let's say you do
var calendar = new Calendar()
..year = 2013
..date = 6;
Neither the year setter nor the day setter can throw, as they cannot know that there is no month setter in your code.So, what month is the date set to after that code? Builder.build(), on the other hand, can throw when called on a partly initialized builder. A builder also can (I don't know whether Java's builder do this) accept variants such as:
Builder.setYear(2012).setDay(60); // February 29
Builder.setYear(2000).setDay(MONDAY).setWeek(14);
// Monday of week 14 of week 2000
So, builders have their advantages.In that case, you're just describing about maintaing a fluent API, which is painfully verbose to maintain for every type.
It also is joyful in the sense that it will throw exceptions at the place where you make errors and not at some later time (for example, you won't get a 'oops, there is no February 29 in 2013' exception when you print a date). I think the designers of Java value that higher than the extra work of language implementers.