It's less dumb than usual Java code in the sense that it's less obvious. Java Lambdas are anonymous, inline implementations of single method interfaces (or abstract classes with a single abstract method). In classic Java you would instantiate an explicit object, from an explicitly named interface (anonymous classes were still allowed, but at least the code would have the name of the implemented interface and the overridden method). This made the code more explicit, therefore more cumbersome but also more obvious. I like lambdas because they make the code considerably less cumbersome but only a little less obvious. But they do make the code a little less obvious, and as such, I would say that they make Java less "dumb".