Neal Gafter reviews the long history of Java from its inception to the present and makes an incursion into what he thinks will be a great future and guessing what might come in Java SE 9+ after 2014.
Neal Gafter explains why Microsoft has introduced dynamic typing in C# 4.0, what it is useful for - Interoperate with dynamic languages, Using reflection-like API, Interacting with COM -, what is DLR, and why they have chosen the dynamic type instead of other possible solutions.
At QCon 2008, Neal Gafter discusses how to evolve a widely deployed language without causing disruption using planned changes for JDK7 (superpackages, closures, annotations on types, type inference, exception handling, and self types) as an example. He examines how the changes are conditioned by preexisting language design choices, and discusses their influence on API design.
In this presentation from the JVM Languages Summit 2008, Neal Gafter discusses closures on the JVM. Topics covered include the JVM libraries, the challenges of running other languages on the JVM, language-specific wrapper/shim libraries, ways of making the JVM more language-friendly, whether lambda expressions are too hard, the history of closures, and forking the JVM to support closures.
In this interview from QCon London 2008, Neal Gafter discusses upcoming language features in Java 7, superpackages, what closures are, the differences between the three major closures proposals (CICE, FCM and BGGA), optional typing systems for dynamic languages, and the next major language.
