{ by david linsin }

December 19, 2008

Java 7 Language Changes Poll

When Stephen Colebourne published the results of the Devoxx whiteboard poll on Java 7 language changes, I had the idea of doing the same poll here on my blog and with the people of our local JUG. I know there are probably other polls and blog posts on the proposed changes out there, but I think it would be valuable input for Sun to hear even more voices.

So how is this supposed to work? Stephen was kind enough to send me a presentation, which highlights the proposed changes, together with code samples on each of the proposals. After you finished going through the presentation, you give your prioritized votes. I decided to not only include the local JUG's votes but also the votes of people reading my blog. There's a field to let me know where you got the pointer to the poll. If you have any questions, you can leave a comment, drop me an email or send me an IM.

What happens to the results? Frankly I don't know. I'll definitely publish them here and I'll let Sun know about it. I think it is important to give your opinion on the future of Java! Every vote counts! Since I've already voted at Devoxx, I won't participate here again and if your vote has already been counted on the Whiteboards there as well, you should probably abstain too.

The poll will run for 4 weeks, which I know is quite long. However, a lot of people will be on Christmas holidays and 4 weeks will give them the opportunity to vote as well.

Enough of the prelude here's the presentation and the poll! Please vote and help out by spreading the word!







10 comments:

Anonymous said...

You forgot to have a vote for String switch and resource management.

David Linsin said...

Just fixed!! Thanks for the hint!

Anonymous said...

A number of these suggestions seem like they are not very generalized. F.i. the list/map access, is this just special notation for these interfaces, or can it be used by our own classes using a more general mechanism?

David Linsin said...

As far as I know most of the proposals are derived from bug entries in Sun's bugparade. Check out Alex Buckely's blog for further information.

As for the generalization, I'm not too sure how the implementation of the proposals are gonna look like. Check out the kijaro project on java.net, they have prototypes on some of the proposals.

However, the description of kijaro implementation of the List/Map access doesn't look like it's generic.

Anonymous said...

> Key people at Sun already know all the ideas
> Sun need to know priorities
> 1 is the most important – Sun should do this first

Sun, Sun, Sun... Sun should do this and Sun should do that. Java is Sun and Sun is Java.

Gimme a break! Are we a Java-community or a Sun-community?

Is Java a totalitarian regime where only Sun exists and noone else?

Anonymous said...

Give us fucking closures and problems 1,2 and 9 will be solved

No need for special magical syntax

David Linsin said...

Anonymous > Is Java a totalitarian regime where only Sun exists and noone else?

I think we need those language changes and I also think that some of those proposals are the result of a lot of pain working with Java. If you look at Alex Buckley's blog you can see that some of the changes have been suggested years ago - by the community.

I think they are trying to listen an you might wanna take this as an opportunity to help them prioritize what to implement in Java 7.

Anonymous > Give us fucking closures and problems 1,2 and 9 will be solved
No need for special magical syntax


I totally agree and if you take a look at the latest java.net poll, you can see that the majority of the voters want to have Closures.

Mats Henricson said...

Language design by public polls, that is just brilliant. It will for sure ensure we get a coherent language!

David Linsin said...

Mats Henricson > Language design by public polls, that is just brilliant. It will for sure ensure we get a coherent language!

Well, Sun has the last call after all. This poll is only supposed to give Sun an idea of what causes the most pain to the average Java programmer in his day to day job.

I think none of us want to have a new language feature that we wouldn't use. We want our pain to be mitigated and if we let Sun know of where our pain points are, they will be able to do a better job addressing those.

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