It's not like Java's the first imperative language to include FP concepts. Whatever lessons it can teach us, we could probably learn them just as well from Ruby, Python, C++, Javasript, C#, and so forth.
True, but those languages have a strong set of idioms for coding. For example, even though Ruby supports mutable calls, they are generally the exception and denoted with a ! (eg map vs map!) Meanwhile, Python is idiomatically opposed to map (to the point of intentionally crippling lambdas) in favor of list comprehensions.
My concern is whether Java8 will spark a strong change in idiomatic usage or if it will just be another incremental change to the current status quo.
