The indolent lambdification of Java

• Published in: Empirical software engineering : an international journal Vol. 26; no. 6
• Main Authors: Petrulio Fernando, Sawant, Anand Ashok, Bacchelli, Alberto
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Nature B.V 01.12.2021
• Subjects: Compilers; Consumers; Investigations; Java
• ISSN: 1382-3256; 1573-7616
• DOI: 10.1007/s10664-021-10039-9

As Java 8 introduced functional interfaces and lambda expressions to the Java programming language, the JDK API was changed to introduce support for lambda expressions, thus allowing consumers to define lambda functions when using Java’s collections. While the JDK API allows for a functional paradigm, for API consumers to be able to completely embrace Java’s new functional features, third-party APIs must also support lambda expressions. To understand the current state of the Java ecosystem, we investigate (i) the extent to which third-party Java APIs have changed their interfaces, (ii) why or why not they introduce functional interface support and (iii) in the case the API has changed its interface how it does so. We also investigate the consumers’ perspective, particularly their ease in using lambda expressions in Java with APIs. We perform our investigation by manually analyzing the top 50 popular Java APIs, conducting in-person and email interviews with 23 API producers, and surveying 110 developers. We find that only a minority of the top 50 APIs support functional interfaces, the rest does not support them, predominantly in the interest of backward compatibility. Java 7 support is still greatly desirable due to enterprise projects not migrating to newer versions of Java. This suggests that the Java ecosystem is stagnant and that the introduction of new language features will not be enough to save it from the advent of new languages such as Kotlin (JVM based) and Rust (non-JVM based).