InfoQ Homepage Presentations Evolving the Java Language
Evolving the Java Language
Summary
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.
Bio
Neal Gafter is a software engineer and Java evangelist at Google. Previously, at Sun Microsystems, he designed and implemented the Java language features in releases 1.4 through 5.0. and led the development of C and C++ compilers at Sun Microsystems, Microtec Research, and Texas Instruments. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Rochester.
About the conference
QCon is a conference that is organized by the community, for the community.The result is a high quality conference experience where a tremendous amount of attention and investment has gone into having the best content on the most important topics presented by the leaders in our community. QCon is designed with the technical depth and enterprise focus of interest to technical team leads, architects, and project managers.
Community comments
Bottom line
by Dan Tines,
Re: Bottom line
by Leonardo Vargas,
Re: Bottom line
by Christian Gravata,
Re: Bottom line
by Dan Tines,
Outdated Bio
by Oli c,
ok...
by Ivan L,
Stale content
by Neil Bartlett,
Not very informative
by Christopher Churchill,
Bottom line
by Dan Tines,
Your message is awaiting moderation. Thank you for participating in the discussion.
This was obviously made before the Oracle takeover.
The best thing for "Java" would be to port C# to the JVM.
Re: Bottom line
by Leonardo Vargas,
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C# for Java already exists. For more information see dev.mainsoft.com/Default.aspx?tabid=177
Outdated Bio
by Oli c,
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Doesn't Neal Gafter work for Microsoft now?
Re: Bottom line
by Christian Gravata,
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C# == Java port to the MS JVM (CLR)
ok...
by Ivan L,
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so why is type inference (the hashmap => map assignment) a potential feature, but the put/get example not.
generics still seem arbitrary to me - a system that meets someones stringent criteria, but not the majorities expectation.
Stale content
by Neil Bartlett,
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This video was recorded in March 2008. Given how quickly things change, it would be nice to see some fresh content.
"Info: Tracking change and innovation in the enterprise software development community"... one year after it happens.
Re: Bottom line
by Dan Tines,
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No, C# evolved. Java didn't
Not very informative
by Christopher Churchill,
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Neal gafter sucks. Josh bloch does a far better job at these kind of improvements to the JDK platform. Dunno what he is upto.