OK, what then is Java &lt; 8?)<p>The point was that if one has a <i>proper</i> old-school computer science (to realize the crucial importance of first class procedures and the power of uniformity 20 years ago) all these modern features are coming for free, to which the code above is an illustration.<p>But who cares. There is a whole industry which praised Java for almost two decades even without these &quot;modern features&quot;.<p>Any PL student of a decent school, if he is not a hypocrite, would tell you that Java is the worst thing that happened to  CS since MS DOS, but who cares about PL theory or even CS? Availability bias and Cargo Cult is enough.