Right. For the JDK developers, the First Commandment is, "Thou shalt not break existing code, ever." Almost all of the things people dislike about post-1.1 Ja

Right. For the JDK developers, the First Commandment is, "Thou shalt not break existing code, ever." Almost all of the things people dislike about post-1.1 Java stems from that, especially the non-reified generics. It's valid to say "I think they should value some things higher than backwards compatibility." It's not valid to say "they're idiots for doing it this way." (Which I don't see in this article, but I see in plenty others.)