Additions, enhancements, announcements ....

Question

NetFlix, Sky Sports, Enhanced Menus, more OD Players    ..... all very well & good ....
.... but how about FIXING the ongoing problems and getting the offering to do what it says on the tin ...... and whilst you're about it, sort out Customer Service !

Answer 1

I just wrote a CmprsdArray class. It accepts an array of any primitive type and compresses it using java.util.zip compression and java.nio to get a byte-array view. It records the original size and type so it can reverse the process. The current decompress requires a cast:
int[] ints = . . . // create an array of ints
// dehydrate when temporarily done with them
CmprsdArray cmpInts = new CmprsdArray( ints );
ints = null;
// later, rehydrate
ints = (int[]) cmpInts.decompress();What I want is the ability to do that without a cast and in a way that lets my decompress methods throw an Error if they are asked for the wrong type.
Now some specific comments:
silkm: Every operation that returns a reference to Object expecting you to cast to the original type could benefit. My decompress(), clone(), every get() from a Collection, etc. Its not a case of a method choosing its return, its a case of the compiler (not JVM) choosing a method where the return matches. Just another use of strong typing.
Grant: That link points to a very well-informed discussion, but I'm proposing something a little larger than the covariant return. Explain why a) your argument is not an argument against argument/parameter list pairs, and b) why this is hard-to-maintain code:
// as proposed:
  int x, int y = whatever.getLocation();
// as now:
  Point p = whatever.getLocation();
  int x = p.getX();
  int y = p.getY();jschell: Let's call this java 2 (generalized emitter/receiver lists). A java 1.5 jvm will not be able to run this code. On the other hand, java 2 would be able to run java 1.5 code, which is what I call "backward compatibility." After all, you can't use inner classes with jdk 1.0. The only code this "breaks" is code that uses a method as a void where another type is declared:
  foo(); // j2 compile-time error
  int foo() { // . . .
  // you'd have to add:
  void foo() { int j = foo(); }
  // or change the call to:
  int j = foo();