Java 8 – Will it Catch Up?
According to the presentations at the last JavaOne conference held in San Fransisco this last week the next release of Java is going to be revolutionary. Matt Raible did a great job of communicating the main thrust for the new direction of Java still to be released. You can read his editorial for a more details.
I’ll take a look at some highlights in his presentation.
One key goal is a merged code base with core capabilities in all Java Platforms such as Java EE compared to Java ME. Code would be more transportable regardless of the target device. At least at the areas of commonality.
Java 8 includes new Date/Time APIs; a welcome addition.
Lambda expressions are finally going to become a reality. Matt quotes Mark Reinhold (Chief Architect, Java Platform Group at Oracle) as saying,
“Lambda is the single largest upgrade to the programming model. Ever. It’s larger even than Generics. It’s the first time since the beginning of Java that we’ve done a carefully coordinated co-evolution of the virtual machine, the language and the libraries, all together. Yet the result still feels like Java.”
Yes, Lambda expressions are going to be a great addition to Java. In fact, the release of Java 8 slipped in order to assure Lambda expressions would be included in the final product. Mark Reinhold writes in his blog, “If we drop Lambda then the remaining features are interesting but not, taken as a whole, very compelling. A Lambda-less release this year would hence be unlikely to gain wide adoption, so why bother?”
I’m finding it hard to get excited about Java 8. Dot Net has supported Lambda expressions for years and has already expanded on the base required to support Lambdas with other features. I remember when Microsoft came out with Windows 95. It looked almost as good as my Macintosh did in 1985, only ten years later. It seems like Java is still playing a lot of catch up with Dot Net regarding the richness of the syntax and libraries.
Java won’t go away any more than Cobol. What will it take to keep from losing ground to competing tools? Are you going to wait for Java 8? Have you already downloaded the community preview? Share your thoughts here or drop me an email at btaylor@sswug.org.
Cheers,
Ben