Agreed. I've been programming Java since the Alpha days and it is getting to the point where all the extended syntax is a bit outrageous. The real problem is

Agreed. I've been programming Java since the Alpha days and it is getting to the point where all the extended syntax is a bit outrageous. The real problem is that most of these extensions are required to make Java more powerful, certainly generics / templating was a huge boon. But examples like the above make my eyes hurt. I suppose my question is whether you can add all the features that make functional languages powerful while also retaining static typing. That's what Java is trying to do. In same cases the type safety is a huge boon to building a large system with many people working on it, in others something more dynamic allows you to be far more productive. I'm not sure you can have both and still have code anybody wants to write. I haven't played much with Clojure yet, not sure if that is the best of both worlds.