On Thu, 2011-07-28 at 15:03 -0700, clay wrote: [ . . . ] > Java has had closures for ages. What it is missing is first class > functions and concise syntax for anonymous functions, but it > definitely has closures.
It is certainly possible to (sort of) make anonymous class instances appear a bit like closures, but it is not correct to say that Java has closures, it does not. A closure is a function with an environment such that the function has no free variables. Java definitely doesn't have any of them -- at least no yet. [ . . . ] > The new file API looks very nice and clean and adds important > functionality. InvokeDynamic is behind the scenes, but that should be > a major performance advantage for Groovy, Ruby, and Python work (I've > heard Scala wouldn't get much gain since it is statically typed). It is not entirely clear that invokedynamic is actually good for languages like Groovy and Jython. All the development was done for JRuby, and I believe it helps that language a lot. Much of the muttering in the Groovy and Jython community seems to indicate that the overheads of using invokedynamic are potentially worse than not using it. It is a shame that the hype around invokedynamic has caused people to fall into the belief that it "should provide major performance advantage for dynamic languages" when actually, as yet, we have no idea whether it will even be particularly useful for some of those languages. > JavaFX 2 looks awesome from my early development with the beta. I know > it's not really related to JDK 7, but it's a complete rewrite of > Java's GUI functionality which is a pretty core feature to Java. This > seems far better better than regular Swing and the web plugin and > startup time seems much improved. The Java language is definitely > clunky compared with FX script, but I haven't tried the Scala/Groovy > support to see if that helps. Until JavaFX2 is available on Linux and OS X it is just vapourware -- or even vaporware for those on the western side of the pond :-) > My biggest disappointment is the omission of JSR-310 (new standard > date time API). I've been using the JSR-310 add-on library, and it > seems so polished and completed. I don't understand why this got > delayed to JDK 8. Most third party libs aren't going to use JSR-310 > until its in the core Java library (as opposed to being an optional > extra like it is now). You and the rest of the Java-verse. There seems no reason to have missed it out. Sadly it doesn't even appear on http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk7/features/ not even as an item for JDK 8 or later. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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