Why Haven’t They Fixed This?

Celebrating Java’s 30th birthday, Maurice Naftalin and Stuart Marks call out some of the language’s oldest headaches—wonky type inference, flaky iterators under concurrent modification, weird set-equality quirks, no built-in immutability, and collections that fall apart when you tweak elements. They ask the obvious: if these look so simple to fix, why haven’t they been?

In this talk you’ll dive into each problem, debate the pros and cons of different fixes, and see whether you can outthink the original Java designers. You’ll leave with a clearer grasp of language and API design, plus practical tips (and maybe bold new ideas) to solve—or even improve—these long-standing niggles.

Watch on YouTube