If you aren't a Java developer you might not know that Java 9 is about to be released. On September 21st Oracle is making Java generally available to the public. As a Java developer, I am not holding my breath. This project has been delayed, delayed again, and then further delayed on the delayed. If this release goes anything like Java 7 or Java 8, comes with not a whole lot to celebrate but a deep sigh.
The last Java releases have been full of security holes and delays as well that since Java 5 and 6 I don't jump up and down and I am more likely to groan. To be clear I am not generally a grumpy old man about technology. I tend to consider myself more on the spectrum of "a kid in candy store" end of the spectrum. So to force myself to be happy about more endless hours of discussion with my bosses about why we shouldn't go to Java 9 for a while I am going to try build up some excitement talking about the big features of Java 9.
Called project jigsaw. This was supposed to be included in Java 8 and then 9. Now it is going to be complete in 10....yeah right. Sorry this has been scrapped from its original proposal and caused mosed of the delays in the 9 release and is a great addition for IoT and embedded systems. Many disagreements have been had in the JCP of this enhancement to Java. To be fair there is some but not what was originally proposed. Read More
A new way to REPL while some are excited about this feature I am ho-hum about it. It is great for people starting to learn Java and there are some debug pieces that appeal but in general, it isn't something that makes me stay up at night thinking about all the ways I am going to use this to dev.
This actually will help. the ability to improve my code surround either of these is fantastic. The changes to concurrency have a lot of potential to make things better for devs across the board. Traversing stack traces that are not just plain text could also have some great enhancements for trouble shooting I can envision better error handling.
You had me at garbage collection combined with the word better. How frequently have I used a third party library only find memory issues at the 4GB+ mark? Well, Oracle has changed how the G1 processes heaps larger than 4GB and all I can say...thank you. Now I hope my rogue 8 GB Tomcats will come back under control.
While HTTP 2.0 is RFC I am not running out the door to work with this. I feel it is too new for me to go running down the aisle singing at the top of my lungs. Don't get me wrong it has some great potential but I personally don't like using bleeding edge technology for enterprise solutions. Can we do things better...yes....do I need to be the first to do it....no. RFC7540 for HTTP2
Nope, Oracle said no time for this one. Damn you Oracle I guess I will stick to org.json.*;
Oh wow I have been dreaming of this one...lol I am sure some dev has slaved on this but not on the top of my list.
This actually is useful so that my security teams and other developers can get a better of idea of what is going on. The new convention is as follows:
$MAJOR.$MINOR.$SECURITY
I would recommend reading this especially if you don't like reading release notes which to that I say RTFM. Java Versioning
There are a number of string changes but improvement of the usage of String memory is welcome. Memory efficiency is always welcome. Compact Strings
I am waiting to see what happens with this. This could be good or bad and I just don't know yet until I start some testing. So I will see how this one goes. AoTC
Look I am not negative on everything there are some possible gains and while my own personal projects will play with Java 9 I will be holding back on my enterprise projects until I see how Java 9 performs.
If you want to read about all 299 JEP please head over to the OpenJDK site http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/
If I have this all wrong or you agree please let me know.
