Check out Project Lombok. That solves the getters/setters equals/hashcode problem using annotations at compile time. It’s a lovely piece of kit.

As for the making common things easier it would be wise to put efforts on making class properties so it would automatically generate getters and setters. Or to provide build-in hash, equals and to-string builders (or even include all commons-lang). I’m also looking for easier ways to construct decorators and proxies so I could only implement methods I’m interested in and making other methods behave as a decorated/proxied class.

I’m looking for more compatibility with JavaFX technology so I could bind to existing java beans.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against these changes, I’m against putting them in favor of much more important things…

There is a good phrase, in my native language, from the old times – “‘better’ is an enemy of ‘good’”. And I think the existing java syntax is good enough.

I understand those new collections will be useful whenever I can’t use an array, but … the main advantage of lists against arrays, is that lists can be modified and more important: List can grow. Without the possibility of mutating collections, language support for collections is a very uncomplete feature.

Thanks for returning to comment. I liked the Voltaire quote too

Serialization is often used in mutli-tiered apps. If you use an XML convertor it would also need to have the custom Hash on both sides too.

http://projectlombok.org/

You might like Project Lombok. Putting a @Data annotation above the class automatically makes properties/equals/hashcode/constructor/toString at compile time. Only problem for me is that it only has Eclipse IDE support, no IntelliJ.

As for the making common things easier it would be wise to put efforts on making class properties so it would automatically generate getters and setters. Or to provide build-in hash, equals and to-string builders (or even include all commons-lang). I’m also looking for easier ways to construct decorators and proxies so I could only implement methods I’m interested in and making other methods behave as a decorated/proxied class.

I’m looking for more compatibility with JavaFX technology so I could bind to existing java beans.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not against these changes, I’m against putting them in favor of much more important things…

There is a good phrase, in my native language, from the old times – “‘better’ is an enemy of ‘good’”. And I think the existing java syntax is good enough.

These language features allow for making common thing easier. Your map example does not work if serialization is a concern.

There are no new keyword in Java 7. Not sure why you think ‘try’ is new.

Java is a workman’s language. Expressing the intent of code while still having the feel on Java is a good ideal.

List l = Arrays.asList(…);
Set s = new Set(Arrays.asList(…));
Map m = new Map() {{
put(”key1″, 1);
put(”key2″, 2);
}};

IDE can help if you still think it is too explicit. Just define few live templates.

Don’t like the new “try” statement. Why they couldn’t introduce some new keyword? Looks really weird…

Making such changes is just a waste of time to satisfy noobs and dynamic language evangelists.

Really interesting.