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Comment by elijahmoses | Hacker News Reader

I can see the advantages of this feature, but like all things, it will take a while for people to become used to it.

I also see the possibility of some programmers, who will be attached to the old way in which java code documentations is displayed.

Although, I would love to ask, will there be an option to choose, to upgrade or not?

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Java almost never removes a feature, specially not one so widespread, there's millions of Javadocs out there based on HTML. I expect they will let you choose forever... having two ways of doing something so basic is probably going to be more annoying than just dealing with the extremely small inconvenience of writing a little HTML.

Sounds more like HTML by default and markdown as opt-in. I wouldn't assume it's going to be a required flag when generating javadoc for what the input format is. Perhaps the javadoc generator could even become smart enough to detect which one is being used.

There is zero chance that HTML JavaDoc will be removed (or even made the default) anytime soon. That would be far too large a change for the Java ecosystem, for an already very conservative language with respect to change.

One of the advantages of a constrained systems such as javadoc is it's uniformity and consistency.

No matter what library, program, codebase I read, if it's Java, I know how to effectively navigate the javadoc documentation. The defaults are good enough most of the time, even without additional developer elaboration/explanations.

There are still modern languages today that don't do automatic documentation anywhere near as good as javadoc.

If something like Markdown can be added in addition to the existing javadoc, and coexist and be used intertwined within the same documents - then this will be a huge winner.

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