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.
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!