[geodel]

Here is the list:

http://openjdk.java.net/projects/jdk9/

[erl]

I appreciate changes that make it easier to monitor and debug applications. Looking forward to some small goodies that I haven't heard much about before:

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/228 - Add More Diagnostic Commands. For example more insight into JIT:ed methods and the code cache.

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/158 - Unified JVM Logging. Logging from the JVM, e.g. GC logging and classloader logging, are configured and printed uniformly.

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/259 - Stack-Walking API. Efficient API for walking the current call stack.

[usrusr]

> http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/259 - Stack-Walking API. Efficient API for walking the current call stack.

Oh, nice! At any given moment in time, how many server CPUs are burning cycles to create a full StackTraceElement array, just because the logger is set up to provide the convenience of call site information with every write?

[djsumdog]

Am I missing properties? Dear god it's 2016, with Java8, and we still don't have real, language-defined properties? I mean you can use Lombok (and if you're not, you should be!), but that's something that really need to be built into the language. C# has them, Python has them, Ruby has them .. even other JVM languages like Scala have them!

I'm really glad I get to do Scala development full time. Even with all the recent improvements to Java 8, I feel the future of Java isn't the language, but the JVM and all the other languages that run on top of it (Scala, Groovy, Clojure, JRuby, etc.)

[lacampbell]

I really don't understand why people love properties so much. Getters and setters are elements of bad style to me - like global variables or gotos. A language like Java (or indeed C#) - specifically designed for huge teams and enterprise programs - shouldn't provide syntax sugar for writing getters and setters.

[kentosi]

"I really don't understand why people love properties", followed by "Getters and setters are elements of bad style".

So you don't like either of the following:

  myObject.name = "Ben";
  myObject.setName("Ben");

What alternative would you suggest then?

[lacampbell]

Probably a rethink of the design. Why are you creating an object, then mutating its name from client code?

The whole point of an object is that client code shouldn't be concerned with such details as maintaining the state of each internal field. Try and think of an object as a single thing you send high level messages to you, instead of a struct, or a bag, or a hashtable.

[chrisseaton]

What would a high level message for changing the name of some object look like, if not setName(newName)?

[marc_omorain]

Calls to mutate state, such as changing the name field, should be rare. I don't see the value in adding syntactic sugar to make it easier to mutate state.

[cygx]

Something like obj.rename(newName). This might seem like a trivial change, but the underlying idea is that we're no longer dealing with a setter only affecting one particular field, but an abstract message that may affect arbitrary internal state.

[lacampbell]

It would probably look exactly like setName(newName).

For me a better question is - why is the name being changed? What high level goal are you trying to accomplish that truly needs you to to directly mutate internal fields, after the object has already been created? Could the object - or system of objects - have been designed with a higher level interface, so that the outside world didn't have to concern itself with such things?

[clusmore]

I agree that setter properties are often a code smell, but getter properties are nice for calculated fields. As a very simple example, consider the following (C#):

  class Circle
  {
    public Circle(int radius) { Radius = radius; }
    public int Radius { get; }
    public int Diameter => Radius * 2;
  }

[lacampbell]

Diameter is a nice example of a getter property. However you could change radius to simply

    public int Radius;

[wtetzner]

I think you mean

    public final int radius;

[pjmlp]

> Scala, Groovy, Clojure, JRuby, etc.

I am yet to work in a Java project where I am allowed to use any of them.

Regarding the properties I really don't get what is the big deal.

No one used to complain about C++ properties, that besides having to write accessors and mutator methods, one needs to declare them on the header files as well.

Or the first version of C# properties isn't much shorter than how it is done in Java, which is still required when extra logic needs to be implemented.

It is been a few years since I have done any Python, but don't do they require two separate functions that are then mapped to a property declaration?

[jjoonathan]

> isn't much shorter than how it is done in java

The savings in screen space and visual cortex neurons doesn't come from the one or two properties that need logic, it comes from the dozen avoided

    /**
     * Gets the foo
     * @return the foo
     */
    public Foo getFoo() {
        return foo;
    }

    /**
     * Sets the foo
     * @param foo
     */
    public void setFoo(final Foo foo) {
        this.foo = foo;
    }

[benjiweber]

Thing is you don't really need to write getters and setters in modern Java.

They're quite a smell that you have no encapsulation, plus mutable state.

I find myself either

- Writing object oriented code with higher level operations that operate on data internally without exposing it via getters and setters.

or

- Value types that take values in constructor and provide naming and additional behaviour on that data (proper Value Types support will really help with this.)

or

- Data pipelines dealing with n-tuples. For which you might be tempted to reach for getters/setters but I'd tend to either use off the shelf tuple types. i.e. tuple(A,B,C) or classes with public fields, or interfaces with static factory to create instances. I'd love better support for tuples with named attributes (Like new c# has)

Loads of getters/setters is something that the frameworks of the last decade encouraged people to do but aren't really a thing any more.

[fauigerzigerk]

Adding 8 comment lines doesn't help your argument. More importantly though, you need to consider the mental load of constantly thinking about and remembering whether something is a property or a method.

I used to be an advocate property syntax, but after seeing them used in C# and now in Swift I have completely changed my mind. It's an inconsistent mess that Java has avoided at the small price of some more lines of code (that are mostly auto generated and need no documentation)

[int_19h]

Can you clarify what's inconsistent about properties in C# (seeing how this is the most obvious counterpart), and how it doesn't apply to Java's properties-by-convention?

[fauigerzigerk]

In Java you can be reasonably sure that whenever you need something from an object you call a method of its class. That's one thing you rarely have to think about in practice. Yes there are exceptions (sometimes painfully inconsistent ones) where fields are accessed directly, but at least that gives you some performance guarantees. It's generally not a big concern.

In C# you do have to think about it all the time. Most types have both properties and methods and in many cases it's not obvious whether the author of that type had the same idea about whether or not something should be a property or a method as you do. Where you only have to remember a name in Java, you have to remember both a name and its syntactic category in C#. One more thing to keep in mind equals greater mental load.

In fact, the guidelines for choosing between one and the other include considerations that should be of no concern to the user of a public interface (https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms229054(v=vs.100)....). If any of these implementation details change, the logical conclusion would be to change the public interface from property syntax to method syntax or vice versa. That's what I call inconsistent.

If you're saying that the choice between getX() and x() in Java is also somewhat inconsistent then you are absolutely right. It's just not a problem on the same scale as in C#.

[pjmlp]

The worst case I tend to encounter across customer code is having properties with big bodies of several lines that should have been made proper methods in first place.

[hota_mazi]

And you forget the declaration of the field itself.

Compare with Kotlin:

    class MyFoo(val foo: Foo)

Done.

[usrusr]

A compiler switch that makes trivial comments on accessor methods a compile error, now that would be something I could support!

[pjmlp]

Javadoc plugin?

[electrum]

Those Javadoc comments are useless. If you have useful comments, they would take up the same space even if the language supported properties.

Now you're left with something that could be fit on three lines (the "final" for the parameter is also useless and can be removed):

    public Foo getFoo() { return foo; }

    public void setFoo(Foo foo) { this.foo = foo; }

Even if you don't write the actual source like that, a good editor like IntelliJ can automatically display them like that (code folding).

The C# version is about the same length:

    public Foo Foo {
        get { return foo; }
        set { foo = value; }
    }

Also, you don't have to write the get/set methods yourself. You hit a few keys and your editor generates them.

[int_19h]

The C# version was the same length 10 years ago. Now you would write:

  public Foo Foo { get; set; }

and get the backing field for free.

[pjmlp]

Now write that with validation on set.

[josho]

> Regarding the properties I really don't get what is the big deal.

I used to feel the same as you, then I dabbled with Rails. I think the deal is that in Java there is a lot of noise in the code. So, developing feels like you need to do a lot of yak shaving before you get to actually work on what you intend to build.

As a result, properties on their own isn't a big deal, but it's one more thing to slow you down and make things a little less enjoyable.

[dmux]

Are people manually writing getters and setters? Every Java IDE I've used has the ability to generate them for you.

[kentosi]

I think that the point is that you shouldn't have to rely on an IDE in the first place.

[djsumdog]

Code generation is a design smell. You shouldn't need it, and it makes the code terrible and less readable. Use Lombok, not the IDE.

[agentgt]

When I see some one complaining code generation being design smell I gag a little at this hackneyed Fowler expression. I'm curios what do you think lambok does?

[st3v3r]

"Code generation is a design smell."

What do you think Lombok is doing?

[carterehsmith]

Properties are not a huge deal, I agree, but they sure are annoyance in Java (compared to e.g. C#).

That is, instead of one line of the code declaring the property, we end up with 10 lines doing the same thing, because we also need to declare getter and setter.

So, a realistic "POJO" that has 8 properties, will have 8 lines of code in C#, but 80 lines of code in Java.

Sure, your IDE will generate the getter and setter, but when you are reading the code, you have to check whether getter and setter are trivial, or perhaps they do something else, too.

It is quite common to get burned by a setter that someone made so that, after setting the value, it also does other shit like, hit Google Analytics, which is why everything is so slow.

The above problem is super easy to spot in 8 lines of code, but much harder to spot in 80 lines of monotonic, repeatable code, especially so when they are decorated with another 100 lines of code that is IDE-generated comments like 'Sets the foo'/'Gets the foo'.

My 5c.

[aardvark179]

Properties mean a lot of things to different people, and C#'s can do stuff that you don't expect so I would guess won't make it into Java as they tend to prioritise reading code over writing it. Having said that if you look at https://www.oracle.com/javaone/on-demand/index.html?bcid=513... about 30 minutes in you might see Brian talking about something that may be close enough to what most people want from properties to satisfy them.

[int_19h]

> Properties mean a lot of things to different people

Thing is, this is true whether your language offers syntactic sugar for them, or not. Properties already exist in Java, they just exist as a matter of convention and custom - but the expectations on how they behave are just as strong, and a misbehaving getter, say, is just as surprising and damaging.

[tofflos]

Does anyone have a list of smaller gems that are not on that list? For example JDK 9 contains an implementation of the CRC32C-algorithm which can be used by web developers to create compact entity tags. I read somewhere that there is even hardware support for it but I'm unsure whether it's being utilized by the JRE.

See http://download.java.net/java/jdk9/docs/api/java/util/zip/CR....

[pjmlp]

I guess you need to go through JEP list and check all marked for 9 either "F Com 9", "F Clo 9".

The proposed ones "F Pro 9" might just make it on 10.

http://openjdk.java.net/jeps/0