[carterehsmith]

>> you can't introduce newer patterns without breaking compatibility.

Yeah it is tricky, but Java has a good track record here:

In 1.2 they added all-new Collections API. The old API is still there and still works, though it is not used much these days.

Then in 5 or thereabouts Collections API got generics.

Then in 8 or so, Collections API got streams, magical multithreading etc etc.

Lambdas were added to the language and standard libraries, and so on.