The Details of Oracle's JDK 7 and 8 'Plan B'

gkunene writes "Oracle has put Java 7 and 8 features up for Java Community approval, providing a clear indication of what the next two major versions of Java are likely to include. (Java 7 contents, Java 8 contents.) From the article: 'The JDK 7 and 8 JSRs represent Oracle's 'Plan B' approach for separating JDK 7 into two separate releases, splitting up features that were all originally intended for the Java 7 release. This approach is intended to help expedite new Java releases. Among the key components of the original Java 7 plan that are now set for inclusion in Java 8 are the Lambda and Jigsaw efforts. At JavaOne this year, Thomas Kurian, executive vice president, Oracle Product Development, explained that Lambda is all about bringing closures to the Java language. Kurian noted at the time that Lambda is intended to provide a more concise replacement for inner classes, as well as support automatically parallel operations on collections. Jigsaw is all about building modularity into the Java Virtual Machine.'"

Comments

It seems a little lean

[msobkow]

Both releases seem a little lean on features compared to Sun's release schedule. On the other hand, they're starting to run out of reasonable features to add to the language without turning it into a kitchen sink.

Re:Java Community approval

[Anonymous Coward]

It's hilarious how clueless you and most of Slashdot are. At Google, we're actually writing more Java code than ever, and Python is slowly being phased out. Pretty much all of the big companies in the area are consolidated almost entirely on a mixture of C and either Java or .NET. Python and Ruby are basically relegated to simple CRUD web applications where performance doesn't matter and threading is inconsequential. While Java is a pretty bad language, Python and Ruby aren't anywhere near being able to compete with it because all of the usable implementations are terrible. CPython, MRI and YARV are garbage, and it'll take years before they reach an acceptable level of performance and remove the GIL. In fact, once InvokeDynamic is added to the JVM JRuby will be the best Ruby implementation by a pretty big margin...

Re:Go Java Go

[certron]

The funny thing about the great flexibility that the frameworks like Spring provide is that you are defining the functionality in the XML files instead of the code, but now you have to learn two languages. The nestable list structure of Lisp is almost the same as the hierarchical format of XML, and in fact, that is how they are often represented natively in Lisp XML parsers. Instead, you could just use one language, structure your data properly, and extend the language to fit your problem.

Re:Closures?

[dido]

Spoken like a true Blub programmer. Trying to go from a programming language that has true lexical closures like Ruby to a language like Java which doesn't is extremely painful. You get used to being able to write code that uses higher-order functions (and hence closures) to get stuff done.

Re:Elephant in the room?

[pmike_bauer]

Please, no.
Reified generics at the JVM level has unintended consequences for other language implementations targeting the JVM.

Ola Bini has an excellent take on why it's best to keep reified generics out of the JVM.
http://olabini.com/blog/2010/07/questioning-the-reality-of-generics/