Tags: java

So it looks like Java 7 is finally out. Just when the mega-corp I work had finally migrated to Java 6. But it looks like there's some fairly painful bugs in it still. Lucid Imagination reports:

"Java 7 GA was released today, but as noted by Uwe Schindler, there are some very frightening bugs in HotSpot Loop optimizations that are enabled by default. In the best case scenario, these bugs cause the JVM to crash. In the worst case scenario, they cause incorrect execution of loops.".

So what is new in Java 1.7...? That we can't use just yet...?

There's a list of them here. I've reposted this list with my comments:

• JSR 292: Support for dynamically-typed languages (InvokeDynamic) : Sounds a bit buzz-wordy, but could be useful.
• Strict class-file checking
• JSR 334: Small language enhancements (Project Coin) : This is probably the bread and butter of the update for me. All those little enhancements that make life easier.
• Upgrade class-loader architecture
• Concurrency and collections updates (jsr166y) : This sounds like something I will use. Also appears to have extensions for mult-core machines
• Unicode 6.0, including Locale Enhancement and separate user locale and user-interface locale : Probably very useful.
• Filesystem provider for zip/jar archives : This could be useful for file management.
• SCTP (Stream Control Transmission Protocol)
• SDP (Sockets Direct Protocol)
• TLS 1.2
• Use the Windows Vista IPv6 stack : At last...!
• Elliptic-curve cryptography (ECC)
• JDBC 4 : This sounds like a good idea...! Must look into this.
• XRender pipeline for Java 2D
• Create new platform APIs for 6u10 graphics features
• Nimbus look-and-feel for Swing : This sounds interesting, but I think there aren't that many Swing applications.
• Swing JLayer component
• Gervill sound synthesizer
• Update the XML stack : About time, but a lot of the stuff that goes over the net is starting to use JSON now.
• Enhanced MBeans

So a lot to get excited about, but I'm probably not going to start thinking about it until those bugs are cleared...!