Java 7 release date?

[blue indigo]

Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

The most I could find with quite a bit of googling was "2009", which is
*too* approximate.

 

[Mark Thornton]

Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

The most I could find with quite a bit of googling was "2009", which is
*too* approximate.

It is unlikely to appear this year (2009). Current prediction is first
half 2010.

 

[Michael Rauscher]

Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

I don't think so.

According to [1], which was written in 2007, the original aim was spring
2008, shifted to January 2009.

In 2008 some ([2],[3]) stated mid 2009.

In December 2008 Mark Reinhold wrote in his blog [4] that there's the
"hope to deliver early in 2010".

Bye
Michael

[1]
<http://today.java.net/pub/a/today/2007/08/09/looking-ahead-to-java-7.html>

[2] <http://www.jinath.com/2008/05/java-se-7-coming-on-mid-2009.html>
[3] <http://knol.google.com/k/alex-miller/java-se-7/1f092vcri65lh/2>
[4] <http://blogs.sun.com/mr/entry/jigsaw>

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

In December 2008 Mark Reinhold wrote in his blog [4] that there's the
"hope to deliver early in 2010".

Interesting.

But not good. That is more than 3 years after Java 6.

Arne

 

[Mark Space]

In December 2008 Mark Reinhold wrote in his blog [4] that there's the
"hope to deliver early in 2010".

Interesting.

But not good. That is more than 3 years after Java 6.

I dunno. 1.5 and 1.6 added a lot of stuff. It's not bad to take a
breather, let programmers really learn the API, and for Sun to deeply
consider what is the best thing to do next. This feels like such a
pause. I'd rather have something really good, with lots of great new
features (reified generics, for example) than just a few additions to
the api.

 

[Stefan Ram]

Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

»Sun Microsystems axed 1,300 employees on Thursday (...)
Among those gone are brains who worked on (...)
the Java 2 Standard Edition (JavaSE) interface.«

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/23/sun_first_cuts/

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

»Sun Microsystems axed 1,300 employees on Thursday (...)
Among those gone are brains who worked on (...)
the Java 2 Standard Edition (JavaSE) interface.«

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/01/23/sun_first_cuts/

Not good.

It is my impression that Java at SUN already were lacking
resources.

And IBM, Oracle, Redhat etc. primarily focus on the Java EE
stuff, because that is where they make their money.

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

blue indigo wrote:
Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

In December 2008 Mark Reinhold wrote in his blog [4] that there's the
"hope to deliver early in 2010".

Interesting.

But not good. That is more than 3 years after Java 6.

I dunno. 1.5 and 1.6 added a lot of stuff. It's not bad to take a
breather, let programmers really learn the API, and for Sun to deeply
consider what is the best thing to do next. This feels like such a
pause. I'd rather have something really good, with lots of great new
features (reified generics, for example) than just a few additions to
the api.

I prefer frequent (as in 1.5-2 years interval) releases with a
little less changes.

The big bangs are much harder to manage project wise.

And some of the stuff planned for 7 is needed now. Like
the Fork Join stuff.

Arne

 

[Joshua Cranmer]

But not good. That is more than 3 years after Java 6.

Yet in the intervening time, Sun saw fit to open source Java, a task
which necessitated the acts of removing third-party closed-source blobs
from Java, which I can't imagine happened very quickly.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Java has, essentially, reached
maturity. I can't see many features that Java should get that it doesn't
yet have. It's not like not having a new release makes Java less
worthwhile: the latest C version is C99, and I don't hear much clamoring
for a C09 (or even to move to C99, for that matter).

 

[Lew]

Michael Rauscher wrote:
blue indigo wrote:
Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

In December 2008 Mark Reinhold wrote in his blog [4] that there's
the "hope to deliver early in 2010".

Interesting.

But not good. That is more than 3 years after Java 6.

I dunno. 1.5 and 1.6 added a lot of stuff. It's not bad to take a
breather, let programmers really learn the API, and for Sun to deeply
consider what is the best thing to do next. This feels like such a
pause. I'd rather have something really good, with lots of great new
features (reified generics, for example) than just a few additions to
the api.

I prefer frequent (as in 1.5-2 years interval) releases with a
little less changes.

The big bangs are much harder to manage project wise.

And some of the stuff planned for 7 is needed now. Like
the Fork Join stuff.

Given that many if not most production Java systems are only just moving off
Java 1.3, let alone yet upgrading to Java 6, it could be a very good thing to
delay the introduction of Java 7. Releasing 7 before 5 is widely adopted
could be very damaging to the popularity of Java.

It shocks me to see how many developers today, those using Java 5 now in
production code, still use raw types and profess not to understand generics.
It seems to be the majority of those I encounter in the workaday world. And
who still use java.util.Vector and java.util.Hashtable in new code despite
that they were replaced in Java 1.2 over a decade ago.

As a practical matter, given the real-world Luddite culture of Java shops, two
years between Java versions is far too quick.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Yet in the intervening time, Sun saw fit to open source Java, a task
which necessitated the acts of removing third-party closed-source blobs
from Java, which I can't imagine happened very quickly.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Java has, essentially, reached
maturity. I can't see many features that Java should get that it doesn't
yet have. It's not like not having a new release makes Java less
worthwhile: the latest C version is C99, and I don't hear much clamoring
for a C09 (or even to move to C99, for that matter).

C is heading towards its 40 years anniversary.

Java is not that old yet.

And MS seems to be putting out new .NET stuff at a very
high rate.

Note that I am not arguing that we need lots of new features.

I can live happily with the way generics are and without the
module stuff (and without properties etc.etc..).

But getting:
- fork join API
- new date time API
- the dynamic language support
- some JIT improvements
out in a new Java version seems as a good idea to me.

And if that does not justify a 1.7.0, then release a 1.6.1 !

Arne

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Arne Vajhøj wrote:
Michael Rauscher wrote:
blue indigo wrote:
Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

In December 2008 Mark Reinhold wrote in his blog [4] that there's
the "hope to deliver early in 2010".

Interesting.

But not good. That is more than 3 years after Java 6.

I dunno. 1.5 and 1.6 added a lot of stuff. It's not bad to take a
breather, let programmers really learn the API, and for Sun to deeply
consider what is the best thing to do next. This feels like such a
pause. I'd rather have something really good, with lots of great new
features (reified generics, for example) than just a few additions to
the api.

I prefer frequent (as in 1.5-2 years interval) releases with a
little less changes.

The big bangs are much harder to manage project wise.

And some of the stuff planned for 7 is needed now. Like
the Fork Join stuff.

Given that many if not most production Java systems are only just moving
off Java 1.3, let alone yet upgrading to Java 6, it could be a very good
thing to delay the introduction of Java 7. Releasing 7 before 5 is
widely adopted could be very damaging to the popularity of Java.

It shocks me to see how many developers today, those using Java 5 now in
production code, still use raw types and profess not to understand
generics. It seems to be the majority of those I encounter in the
workaday world. And who still use java.util.Vector and
java.util.Hashtable in new code despite that they were replaced in Java
1.2 over a decade ago.

As a practical matter, given the real-world Luddite culture of Java
shops, two years between Java versions is far too quick.

Server side Java is very often far behind in versions, because
nobody want to upgrade working apps if they don't have to.

But longer intervals between versions does not solve that
problem - it makes it worse, because apps goes live with
older Java versions.

Arne

 

[Roedy Green]

Does anyone know the Java 7 release date, even approximately?

Sun is cutting back, so I would expect Java 7 to be released later,
perhaps in 2010.

This is not something anybody knows. If you knew how long it would
take to fix a bug, you could just fix it.
--
Roedy Green Canadian Mind Products
http://mindprod.com

"Here is a point of no return after which warming becomes unstoppable
and we are probably going to sail right through it.
It is the point at which anthropogenic (human-caused) warming triggers
huge releases of carbon dioxide from warming oceans, or similar releases
of both carbon dioxide and methane from melting permafrost, or both.
Most climate scientists think that point lies not far beyond 2°C (4°F) C hotter."
~ Gwynne Dyer

 

[Arved Sandstrom]

Arne Vajhøj wrote: [ SNIP ]

I prefer frequent (as in 1.5-2 years interval) releases with a little
less changes.

The big bangs are much harder to manage project wise.

And some of the stuff planned for 7 is needed now. Like the Fork Join
stuff.

Given that many if not most production Java systems are only just moving
off Java 1.3, let alone yet upgrading to Java 6, it could be a very good
thing to delay the introduction of Java 7. Releasing 7 before 5 is
widely adopted could be very damaging to the popularity of Java.

It shocks me to see how many developers today, those using Java 5 now in
production code, still use raw types and profess not to understand
generics. It seems to be the majority of those I encounter in the
workaday world. And who still use java.util.Vector and
java.util.Hashtable in new code despite that they were replaced in Java
1.2 over a decade ago.

As a practical matter, given the real-world Luddite culture of Java
shops, two years between Java versions is far too quick.

Projects I've worked on recently, or heard details about, use 1.4, 1.5
and 1.6, sometimes all at the same time. That is, one server may have to
run on 1.4, another on 1.5, others are on 1.6, development may mostly be
on 1.5...that kind of thing. All in the same overall project.

There often isn't much choice, even for new work, because of vendor
decisions. For example, working with Oracle SOA on Linux I'm stuck with
1.4 for some stuff and 1.5 for others...I couldn't use 1.6 if I wanted to.

Java 7 is all well and good but only some people will be able to use it.
For years to come.

Given what I work with - J2EE - Java 5 is OK. The stuff that really
matters is advances in the J2EE APIs, not in the core language. This has
been the case for a long time. I will concede that the ability to write
better APIs is made easier with language advances, but only a small
percentage of Java developers _directly_ need the new language features.
For example, most developers use generics only in the sense that they
want to make their IDE stop complaining...otherwise they could care less.

Lew, you shouldn't be shocked. Most programmers out there simply aren't
very good. Take generics as an example yet again: in order to understand
them you often have to spend hours of your own time reading tutorials and
writing your own little exercise apps. Most programmers don't program on
their own time...ergo, they don't know about anything except the minimum
they need to code at work. Not so long ago I had to educate a colleague
on what an enum is...not just the fact that they existed in Java, but
what they were, period. And don't even get me started on the general
level of knowledge concerning concurrency...Arne mentioned fork/join, but
I'll hazard a guess that at least 8 out of 10 Java programmers have never
explicitly coded using anything from java.util.concurrent, and possibly
never anything to do with threads at all. So there's no mystery why they
use certain classes rather arbitrarily.

I blame the power of IDEs for some of that. Intellisense on the MS side
and similar features on the Java side...stuff gets used because it's
there, not because it was wisely chosen. And since Intellisense only
helps so far, if you don't know about a certain API you can't very well
type in the first part of a class name, can you?

AHS

 

[John W Kennedy]

C is heading towards its 40 years anniversary.

Java is not that old yet.

And MS seems to be putting out new .NET stuff at a very
high rate.

Note that I am not arguing that we need lots of new features.

I can live happily with the way generics are and without the
module stuff (and without properties etc.etc..).

But getting:
- fork join API
- new date time API
- the dynamic language support
- some JIT improvements
out in a new Java version seems as a good idea to me.

IEEE 754-2008

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Sun is cutting back, so I would expect Java 7 to be released later,
perhaps in 2010.

Links to sources has already been posted.

This is not something anybody knows.

I very much hope they have a project manager that has a plan
that shows it.

If you knew how long it would
take to fix a bug, you could just fix it.

I would expect the majority of work to be enhancements
not bug fixes.

Arne

 

[Knute Johnson]

> I would expect the majority of work to be enhancements
not bug fixes.

Arne

Which I think is one of the problems. There are lots of bugs that are
never going be fixed that really should be or we will end up with
VisualBasic. It's documentation should really be a list of things that
don't work according to the docs. Bugs are one major stumbling block to
acceptance of future version. In fact, it may be the only real reason
most people don't upgrade.

 

[David R Tribble]

It shocks me to see how many developers today, [...] And
who still use java.util.Vector and java.util.Hashtable in new code despite
that they were replaced in Java 1.2 over a decade ago.

Except that Sun forgot to give us an unsychronized replacement
for java.util.Properties as well.

-drt

 

[Lew]

It shocks me to see how many developers today, [...]  And
who still use java.util.Vector and java.util.Hashtable in new code despite
that they were replaced in Java 1.2 over a decade ago.

Except that Sun forgot to give us an unsychronized replacement
for java.util.Properties as well.

There are many places in the standard API where we are forced to use
those legacy classes, Vector and Hashtable. I specified "in new code"
as the shocking place to find them, i.e., when one has the choice to
use an updated List or Map implementation. It's hardly surprising
when using legacy code like java.util.Properties.

 

[Arne Vajhøj]

Which I think is one of the problems. There are lots of bugs that are
never going be fixed that really should be or we will end up with
VisualBasic. It's documentation should really be a list of things that
don't work according to the docs.

I am practically never effected by bugs in Java itself.

Are there so many open bugs ? And in what ? Swing ?

Arne