Considering that Javascript, Ruby, Python, C#, Perl, and even PHP have supported anonymous functions or lambda expressions, this advancement is a long time coming.
Oh and I thought this was hilarious. :)
Java, on the other hand, has a completely different application space and feature set. First class functions and anonymous functions seem like natural additions to the language.
The wise are not dogmatic.
And to top it off, Guy seems to have that rare combination of being simultaneously super smart and reasonably humble. I have never read anything he's written or listened to any talk he's given where I was not greatly impressed by him and what he had to say.
I don't think I've ever seen him comment on Hacker News. I wish we could get him to comment regularly here, as his knowledge and insight would be of great value.
So Java went all-out with (1) a static type system and basic language features that C++ coders could respect, (2) a level of hype and corporate sponsorship/support that PHBs could respect, (3) a portable, eventually fast VM, opening up some nice deployment options. There was no need to introduce really exciting language features, only to keep promoting the OOP concepts that C++ thought-leaders were so enthusiastic about at the time.
> almost every programming language has more abstraction power than Java
Just curious: how does that make C++ stack up against other "fashionable" languages?
Even so, it fares pretty good. What it lacks in expressive power it makes up in speed, libraries and industry support. C# is in my opinion a realistic C++ alternative or complement.