Hughes didn't disagree with what I said; I would contend that higher-order functions and laziness only improve modularity iff the language was referentially transparent in the first place. The assumption that the theoretical FP language he discusses is referentially transparent is found on page 2 of Hughes' paper.
Java's lambdas only serve to reduce boilerplate; everything done with Java's lambdas was long possible using anonymous classes. Theoretically, they do nothing to present the advantages discussed by Hughes [1].
Hughes also didn't talk about laziness-by-default: his argument still holds if laziness is available somehow (which it is in many FP languages).
[1]: Of course, lambdas might improve the style and expressivity of idiomatic Java enough to make up some ground.
Java's lambdas only serve to reduce boilerplate; everything done with Java's lambdas was long possible using anonymous classes. Theoretically, they do nothing to present the advantages discussed by Hughes [1].
Hughes also didn't talk about laziness-by-default: his argument still holds if laziness is available somehow (which it is in many FP languages).
[1]: Of course, lambdas might improve the style and expressivity of idiomatic Java enough to make up some ground.