Proposed schedule change for JDK 9 (opens in new tab)

One thing I am looking forward to in JDK 9 is the new API, called JVMCI, that lets you replace HotSpot's JIT compiler with one written in Java. Oracle Labs is working on a compiler for this called Graal. We're using this to make languages other than Java running on the JVM, like JRuby, run faster by using the JIT compiler API directly.

(I work for Oracle)

I'd like to see it in my cloud deployments. Modularity means smaller size of server jdk and thus smaller size of images. Faster deployments and builds, less traffic and storage in build farms...

Yes, the replacement of sun.misc.Unsafe with the new Varhandles API will be a very nice tidy up in a couple of key places in my language implementation. The new module system will provide compile time checking that OSGi currently only provides much later, and there's a few other nice changes round process management.

Jigsaw is the big thing really, and its effect is going to be a more long term thing than an immediate change.

My company is starting a few new bigger projects and we're building it on java8 right now keeping in mind that we will make architectural changes once java9 is released and rewrite some parts to use jigsaw. Classpath mechanism will be finally deprecated.

I'm looking forward to the REPL.

Not really, getting to deploy Java 8 projects is still a big issue.

Most enterprise deployments are limited by what the IT guys know and are willing to accept on their servers.

Yes, particularly for the HiDPI support for Windows. If Java 9 slips to summer 2017, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and manually scale our Windows GUI on HiDPI (shudder) unless Darcula (https://github.com/bulenkov/Darcula) comes through for us.

I can't wait for compact strings.

All the Jigsaw compatibility issues OTOH I'm not looking forward to.

I am happy that Java is popular.

I know it since Sun introduced it and it was a saner experience than C++ back in the day, when each compiler implemented their own vision of the ongoing working standard.

There are only three things I don't like about Java, proper AOT compilation is only available in commercial JDKs and lack of value types, and use of @Overrides annotation instead of adding a proper keyword.

The first two will hopefully get addressed in Java 10, assuming Oracle doesn't change their minds about the language.

It probably comes from an earlier experience with a crappier Java. But Java 2, Java 5, and most of all Java 8 (and IMHO, a gradual attitude change from J2EE-style architecture astronautism to Guava-style DRYism) have transformed it into a very pleasant language to use, on a very mature, reliable platform, that also connects to other interesting languages like Scala. I don't know any other popular (popularity matters! a large ecosystem is very useful) language that is as well suited for making very maintainable, low defect codebases. (Although, I'm working on learning golang.)

Java's now-undeserved reputation is just a historical legacy now, but it serves a useful purpose: keeping people like you, who might compete, from using the best tools available. Strangely, I think Java can, at least for a while, count as a "secret weapon" the way Paul Graham described lisp once. (Or is the cat too far out of the bag already? Given how much software is still being unnecessarily written in languages like Python, Ruby, JavaScript that lack type verification, I think Java is still a secret weapon for now)

Java is a reliable tool.

Might not be hip or shiny, but it works.

Always good to have in your toolbox in my opinion.

I'm happy, because Java already solved a lot of problems on which many emerging platforms are still working on. It's mature, it's working, there's great community and mostly a consensus on architectural approaches. It could be better, but the features I personally desire (better reflection and metamodels to support generative programming), are not present nowhere in other popular languages and platforms.

it's humbling. With a small community, if you have an idea, you can create a pull request and change the shape of the ecosystem. It's not that hard to create the definitive library, with a few weeks or months of effort.

In a medium community, you can shape discussion. It's still possible to have a lot of influence without tons of effort.

In a large community, you're up against really smart people who are paid to solve problems that can take weeks to simply understand.

You could hack up golang library for web handling that's somewhat novel and get traction. Java? Tomcat has tens of thousands (perhaps hundreds of thousands) of professional hours thrown at it.

Java 8 is fine. It fixed a lot of Java's issues, and introduced some functional programming concepts which might help reduce the usual boilerplate.

What bothers me is that there are tons of improvements in the VM area that we'll have to wait for longer. All of this only because Oracle stubbornly merged Jigsaw into trunk before it was even close the ready. All the issues surfacing now people have been telling Oracle for the past five years. Or Oracle simply could have looked at the experience gained with OSGi over the past decade, especially the OSGi enterprise specification.

Me too, specially on Android where we still need to survive with Java 6 and cherry picked pieces from Java 7 and Java 8.

Most likely it will never see 100% support for Java 8, or anything else that comes afterwards.

..and they still need to iron out some details of project jigsaw (the new module system, which was originally planned for Java 7)