Update on Coin futures from JavaOne

[Joe Darcy]

Hello.

Earlier today, I presented my JavaOne session on "The Heads and Tails of 
Project Coin." [1]  The talk included some retrospectives from 
developing the Coin features which I hope to write up in more detail in 
the near future.

Turning toward the future, the talk also spent a little time discussing 
possible language changes coming in JDK 8. First, planning for JDK 8 is 
on-going and the feature list is subject to change; the JEP process [2] 
will be used to help define the roadmap going forward. With those 
caveats, small language changes we're considering proposing for JDK 8 
include:

    Refinements to JDK 7 Coin features
        try-with-resources on an effective final variable
        removing restrictions on usage of diamond
        @SafeVarargs on private methods
    Collection literals(?)
    Repeating Annotations(?)
    Method and constructor parameter names at runtime(?)

Personally, I would welcome programming with collection literals. 
Repeating annotations and the ability to retrieve the names of 
method/constructors at runtime are both long-standing requests from our 
colleagues in EE.

However, with the broad scope of language and platform changes coming 
into JDK 8 courtesy Lambda and Jigsaw, all these smaller language 
changes have to be made somewhat opportunistically. For that reason, for 
JDK 8 we are *not* planning on having another open call for proposals as 
was done for Project Coin in JDK 7.

-Joe

[1] http://blogs.oracle.com/darcy/entry/project_coin_javaone2011
[2] http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/0