Sure, you may know me as a very amateur political commentator or guy who builds Web stuff, but I spend most of my day writing Java code. My first impression of Java 7 was that it is a disaster due to some compiler bugs that result in unstable code. While it’s certainly prudent to wait for Oracle to work out those bugs, I am actually pretty excited about the language features in new version. One of the biggest complaints about Java is all of the extra typing you have to do compared to scripting languages like Ruby and Python, so it’s always good to see things get a little simpler. The new features certainly won’t convince anyone who isn’t already a Java developer to switch to it, but they will make life a little easier for those of us who use Java already.
September 8, 2011 at 9:01 pm
I really like the AutoClosable idea. In the early 2000s we had IBM Research produce a static analysis tool (at the cost of hundreds of thousands) that basically looked for stuff like that because those bugs were taking down so many JEE apps.
Better late than never 🙂