Oh sure, there are good reasons for a language to have support for lambdas. Thanks for the link. My question is not whether they offer benefits, but whether those benefits are going to sway anyone’s decision one way or another.

This is like asking whether any product should have feature X. We go out and do a survey, and find some number, “C," of our customers would use the feature if we implement it. But this is not the number we need. We need the number of existing customers we would lose to competitors if we don’t implement the feature in the near future (“L"), and the number of new customers we would win away from competitors if we implement the feature (“W").

The salient number to consider isn’t C, but rather (L+W). That’s the number that tells us the return in market terms of implementing the feature. In my comment, I was asking if (L+W) is significant. The reasons given for lambdas speak to C and perhaps L.

It seems like you're thinking about it in terms of a programming language market place, and you're trying to optimize Java's placement in that market place. Which is a valid perspective, but probably not the one they're coming from.

I think their perspective is more, "Given that Java is the programming language some people will choose, how can we make their life easier?" I think that's a valid perspective as well, since many people are forced to use a particular programming language.