The public KEEP review for <static members and typ...

# language-evolution

[Alejandro Serrano.Mena]

The public KEEP review for static members and type extensions is now open. We would love to hear your feeback! 🙂

(Feedback and discussion on the proposal happens here, feedback on the text itself happens here)

[Klitos Kyriacou]

This proposal looks good. One minor comment I have is the ambiguity of the word "static". The proposal already has a whole paragraph about "static" being ambiguous, but I'm referring to a more fundamental ambiguity. The text starts with a mention of "static" as if everyone knows what it means, but in fact it is the meaning of "static" that is used only by Java, C++ and C#.

In English, "static" means "unchanging", and the original use of "static" in programming languages referred to variables defined in the body of a function, that retained their value between function calls. These variables had local scope but whole-application lifetime. This was used in B, BCPL and C. Then C++ came along and reused the same keyword to define a class member that was "per class" instead of "per class instance". Java and C# followed suit.

Unless the proposal is read by those know Java, C++ or C#, the first few lines would not be clear. I don't mind proposing the "static" keyword in Kotlin code, but perhaps the introductory text should refer to "class-wide" members rather than "static" members.