Link Details

Is there any specific reason to have chosen the => on BGGA?

It seems to have come about in the v0.3 specification:

http://gafter.blogspot.com/2006/10/closures-for-java-v03.html

Why => was chosen over -> ... I have no idea

=> and -> are two distinct symbols in math. What's interesting is that => is usually associated with implication, while -> is more traditionally used for defining function signatures (f: R -> D | function f maps from reals to integers). => makes sense when defining an actual closure value like so (Scala syntax):

val closure = { s:String =>
s + " appendage"
}

-> would make more sense for defining function types, but it seems that for simplicity's sake, only one of them was chosen. Since -> has totally different semantic implications to those of us used to C++, => was probably chosen to avoid confusion.

Interesting discussion in comments on the site...