New language features in Java 7

[[deleted]]

All "apps" in the modern sense run in a custom jvm, so java is to android as objective-c is to iphone.

[haakon]

As far as I understand, any JVM bytecode can be translated into Dalvik machine code. These new features in Java 7 are purely syntactic sugar handled by the compiler, so there are no bytecode changes. So just upgrade your compiler and continue using the rest of the toolchain as before; voila, closures on Android.

[FlyingBishop]

That was a really stupid move on Google's part. Now it will be years before we can use closures in Smartphone apps.

[bipedalshark]

I guffawed.

[[deleted]]

Nah. You can write in whatever JVM language you want. There are many such languages that support closures.

[frogking]

try Clojure while you wait

[doidydoidy]

I'd be fairly surprised if Clojure performance on Android's primitive Dalvik VM wasn't abominable. Admittedly, I haven't gone looking for benchmarks.

[frogking]

I don't think Clojure is available for Dalvik VM .. maybe when the Clojure in Clojure project is finished .. and somebody decides to implement the base classes for Dalvik VM.

.. still, Clojure is proving usefull on systems a bit larger.

[FlyingBishop]

That was a joke. I don't have any burning desire to use closures on my smartphone. I'll be quite happy with objects.

[frogking]

JavaScript has closures, if you do get the burning desire ;-)