Looking Ahead to Java 7.0
With Java 6.0 barely a week out of the gate, it looks like Sun has started pushing early access releases of 7.0. Many are comparing this, feature and adoption wise to 5.0. I think closures are conceptually worthwhile, though there is much potential for a badly botched implementation. It may be time to dig up the JSR and check out the EA to see what’s what. I am already concerned about the property support’s implementation choices. My own open source project, Navel, builds directly on the JavaBeans API, so I am curious about anything that improves or simplifies it. However, if the arrow (->) operator really is the symbol they’ve chosen, I am not so keen. And I am really scratching my head over XML literals. In my view, Java programmers are typically the worst abusers of XML, in terms not only of using it inappropriately but going way overboard. For example, take a look at Struts and Spring.
