Even though Java SE 7 gets thumbs-up from the committee the licensing model is still very much in flux as outlined here. The list of features for JSE 7 can be found here, and here are my favorites:
- JSR 292: Support for dynamically-typed languages – a great feature for installed Java applications that support scripting. I see this being very valuable in both the client and the server.
- JSR 334: Small language enhancements – Very nice! Using switch statements for Strings would be a warm welcome to any XML or file parser. This should make parser code much easier to read.
- JSR 203: More new I/O APIs for the Java platform (NIO.2) – the new file API’s are very straightforward and will be nice to work with. I especially like the new copy method for executing a basic file copy. It will be interesting to see if Eclipse takes on some of these enhancements since it is very file I/O intensive.
As Steve points out in the comments – I misread the features list and didn’t realize these two were deferred! Ugh…
JSR 308: Annotations on Java types – another great thing for tools like EclipseJSR 335: Project Lambda – Even though there is much discussion on whether these are true lambda expressions the feature is really nice.
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Is that wishful thinking to mention JSR 308 and JSR 335 in the context of Java SE 7?
Wow, I guess so! I didn’t even realize they were under the deferred to 8 section. Thanks for the catch!