shrug. This seems like a pretty standard use of the ternary operator to me. I mean, just google examples of Comparator, and you'll find tons of examples like th

shrug. This seems like a pretty standard use of the ternary operator to me. I mean, just google examples of Comparator, and you'll find tons of examples like this: @Override public int compareTo(Object arg0) { Country country=(Country) arg0; return (this.countryId < country.countryId ) ? -1: (this.countryId > country.countryId ) ? 1:0 ; } (http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/03/difference-between-comparator-and-comparable-in-java.html http://www.javacodegeeks.com/2013/03/difference-between-comp...) But that's orthogonal to my point, which is that lambdas offer significant improvements to readability because they remove the irrelevant cruft and simplify the code.