Update on Coin futures from JavaOne

[Bruce Chapman]

Joe,

Is the omission of byte literals (or alternatively unsigned literals, or 
unsigned bytes) deliberate, or is there still intention to address this 
somehow?

Secondly, is the JEP process the way to propose further small language 
enhancements?

Bruce

On 5/10/2011 1:52 p.m., Joe Darcy wrote:
> 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
>
>