Oracle has announced that Java 7 is available for download. This is mostly news for developers because the new Java 7 features obviously aren’t implemented in code that you’re likely to encounter for a while. There are some new networking and security features listed briefly but the bigger new features seem to be aimed toward developers.
Java SE 7 delivers:
- Language changes to help increase developer productivity and simplify common programming tasks by reducing the amount of code needed, clarifying syntax and making code easier to read. (JSR 334: Project Coin)
- Improved support for dynamic languages (including: Ruby, Python and JavaScript), resulting in substantial performance increases on the JVM. (JSR 292: InvokeDynamic)
- A new multicore-ready API that enables developers to more easily decompose problems into tasks that can then be executed in parallel across arbitrary numbers of processor cores. (JSR 166: Fork/Join Framework)
- A comprehensive I/O interface for working with file systems that can access a wider array of file attributes and offer more information when errors occur. (JSR 203: NIO.2)
- New networking and security features
- Expanded support for internationalization, including Unicode 6.0 support
- Updated versions of numerous libraries
- Strong backward compatibility of Java SE 7 with previous versions of the platform preserves the skill sets of current Java software developers and protects Java technology investments.
Developers interested in getting started immediately with the Java SE 7 release can leverage the NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) 7.0, Eclipse Indigo with the additional Java SE 7 plug-in or IntelliJ IDEA 10.5, which support the latest features of the Java SE 7 platform. Oracle JDeveloper support for JDK 7 is intended for a release later this year.
You can download Java 7, build 1.7.0-b147 as the Java Development Kit or the Java Runtime Environment from the Oracle download page.
If you’d like to learn more about these technical features, you can watch a video from Oracle’s global event earlier this month.
Between Adobe Flash, Adobe Reader, and Java, it’s hard to keep everything up to date and it’s even difficult to know what has updates available.