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Java 7: What's In It For Developers

Posted by samzenpus on from the take-a-look-under-the-hood dept.

GMGruman writes "After five years of a torturous political process and now under the new ownership of Oracle, Java SE 7 is finally out (and its initial bugs patched in the Update 1 release). So what does it actually offer? Paul Krill surveys the new capabilities that matter most for Java developers, from dynamic language support to an improved file system."

7 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Kill it Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ah yes. The old "blame the language for the lack of a developer's skills" ploy. It's a sad carpenter who blames his tools for his incompetence. It's a sadder carpenter who blames a tool for other carpenters' incompetence.

    Just curious: what do you think all those "Java weenies who couldn't code themselves out of a paper sack" would do if Java died. Would they magically become skilled code gurus because Java doesn't exist? Or would they be incompetent coders in a different language?

    As Dilbert so succinctly put it: you're solving the wrong problem!

  2. Re:One day we will be done with java... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    While you are busy being a jackass and letting us all know you have never made a single mistake EVER with resource allocation, some of us have work to do and enjoy the fact that we will never have to type try{openFile}catch(DamnException){}finally{try{closeFile}catch(AotherDamnException){}} ever again.

  3. Re:Kill it Oracle by Afforess · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let me get this straight - you think that a harder programming language increases programmer competence. While I'm not defending Java, this logic is deeply flawed.

    If you follow it to it's logical conclusion, the best programmer's flip the machine bits by hand...

    --
    If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
  4. Re:Devs can now be more lazy by ApplicativeJones · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes. Let's shun all advances in programming language design, because they make it too hard to use languages without them.

    Man, imagine what'd happen if you ever ran into a programming language with a good design. There are some out there that are actually pretty good. Of course, no language is perfect - or even close. But people who resist making things better just because it makes defects in existing languages more obvious is doing themselves, and the entire field of software engineering, a disservice.

  5. Riddled with errors by Samantha+Wright · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Among the delayed capabilities are adding Lambda expressions, or "closures," to Java for multicore programming, ...

    Lambda expressions are not closures, and neither enable parallelization. Yes, the Wikipedia articles for both are dense swamps, but couldn't you have at least tried to ask someone? Please?

    --
    Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
    1. Re:Riddled with errors by Animats · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Lambda expressions are not closures, and neither enable parallelization.

      I noticed that too. Somehow, in the Java community, closures somehow became connected to lambda expressions. Whether you have a syntax for anonymous functions is completely separate from whether you have closures.

      In a reasonably static language like Java, adding closures makes the concept of the "stack" a lot more complex. A closure can contain a binding to a local variable outside the closure. That binding can outlive the scope of that local variable. So local variables now have to be handled in a more general (and slower) way. The semantics of local variables gets a lot more complicated, too.

      Perl, Python, and Javascript have closures, although most programmers who use those languages don't know it. In those languages, any nested function can potentially be a closure. (Well, in Perl, there's a warning if you do that.) The Java people don't seem to have taken that route, possibly because they don't want to incur the overhead of a closure unless the programmer really wants one.

  6. Re:Kill it Oracle by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Insightful

    The old "blame the language for the lack of a developer's skills" ploy.

    Only in your imagination. Java, like PHP, specifically sought to attract the low end developers away from VB; and those who struggled with basic C/C++. The fact that Java is purposely a very limited and dumbed down C++ is further proof in the pudding. In fact, that was part of the marketing strategy. They basically positioned Java as the C++ for idiots. That was their whole enterprise marketing campaign - you don't need expensive, good, C++ programmers when you can do the same with shitty, third rate (frequently third world), cheap, Java programmers. That literally was the push into the enterprise with Java.

    While not politically correct to say so, the FACT of the matter is, Java is C++ for idiots. That, of course, doesn't mean ONLY idiots use Java or that C++ has no idiots, but the sad fact is, Java, like PHP, has a vastly disproportionate number of shitty programmers.

    Did the language make them shitty? Absolutely not. Do these languages attract a large number of shitty programmers? Absolutely, yes!

    Sorry, but this is one of those classic cases where politically correct or not, the fact is, the non-politically correct answer is factually true, regardless of how much it offends your sensibilities.