Musings on JDK development
-
JavaOne
October 4, 2011
Project Coin at JavaOne 2011
Update: A video of this talk is now available on Parley's.
Earlier today, I presented my JavaOne session on The Heads and Tails of Project Coin (slides).
The talk included some retrospectives from developing the Coin features which I hope to write up in more detail in the near future.
Turning toward the future, the talk also spent a little time discussing possible language changes coming in JDK 8. First, planning for JDK 8 is on-going and the feature list is subject to change; the JEP process will be used to help define the roadmap going forward.
With those caveats, small language changes we're considering proposing for JDK 8 include:
- Refinements to JDK 7 Coin features
try-with-resources on an effective final variable- removing restrictions on usage of diamond
@SafeVarargson private methods
- Collection literals(?)
- Repeating Annotations(?)
- Method and constructor parameter names at runtime(?)
Personally, I would welcome programming with collection literals. Repeating annotations and the ability to retrieve the names of method/constructors at runtime are both long-standing requests from our colleagues in EE.
However, with the broad scope of language and platform changes coming into JDK 8 courtesy Lambda and Jigsaw, all these smaller language changes have to be made somewhat opportunistically.
For that reason, for JDK 8 we are not planning on having another open call for proposals as was done for Project Coin in JDK 7.