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Comment by vorg | Hacker News Reader

> one day you'll get to use Java 8

Only new Java projects would actually use the Java 8 features anytime soon. Existing Java codebases will stick to their Java 6 installation for a long while. It could be years before lambdas are used to any significant degree. Look at how long it took for many Java 1.4 shops to actually upgrade to Java 5, let alone encourage developers to use its features. Even today a lot of places still allow and even encourage use of collections classes without the generics specified.

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You can start using Java 8 as soon as you are willing to move. I don't think there are many breaking changes in the new version. Just give it a few months to be really stable. Last week , it took me around ten minutes to move one application from 6 to 7.

"You can start using Java 8 as soon as you are willing to move."

As long as you aren't writing Java code on Android, in which case you're still stuck at Java 6 (with a very small subset of Java 7 features that were added 3 years after Java 7 came out).

Not the fault of the Java language, really, but it is incredibly annoying how unclear Google has been on the future of their dialect of Java post the Oracle lawsuit.

I have been waiting for servlet 3.0 on App Engine since 2010

https://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=3...

The funny thing is that google's own GWT requires it now.

It's worth noting that Android 4.4 does support pretty much all JDK7 features (multicatch / try with resources / etc), finally. I've run into the occasional missing method from some of the newer class libraries, but nothing too serious.

Of course, if this is any indication it'll be several years before its safe to use even JDK7 features considering Android's update trends, let alone JDK8 ...

This has made me use C++ for my hobby graphics programming on Android instead.

The NDK has all the support I need, when coupled with something like Qt/SDL/openFramerworks and C++11 feels better than Google's Java fork.

you should consider using Scala on android. works really well for my projects.

Which scala android project are you using?

There are quite a few breaking changes in Java 8, here's the official compatibility guide: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/8-compatibilit...

One worth noting: If existing code is using Proxy.getProxyClass and the Constructor.newInstance method to create a proxy instance, it will fail with IllegalAccessException. RFE 4487672

Why would you ever do that..? If your production code is using those kind of proxies, it must be one terrible mess. First order of businesses would be to fix the code at the very least.

This used to be the right way to create dynamic proxies. Why one would do this is another discussion. For completeness here's a link to the usage in Spring: https://github.com/spring-projects/spring-framework/search?q...

The Spring code is still fine. You didn't quote the entire advisory:

> If existing code is using Proxy.getProxyClass and the Constructor.newInstance method to create a proxy instance, it will fail with IllegalAccessException if the caller is not in the same runtime package as the non-public proxy interface. For such code, it requires a source change to either (1) call Constructor.setAccessible to set the accessible flag to true, or (2) use the Proxy.newProxyInstance convenience method.

To end up in that specific condition is fairly difficult and usually means something is wrong with the code to begin with. It's still a very easy fix in any event (adding in 1 extra line of code before the call).

"java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: Test : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0"

(yeah, shouldn't happen in the best of all possible worlds, but may still happen anyway)

Java had major shifts in the language in 1.2 and 1.5. Java 8 isn't one of those cases. I think you'll find adoption won't be terribly slow.

I would put lambdas in the "major shifts in the language" category.

> I would put lambdas in the "major shifts in the language" category.

Recompile away, stuff just works. Add lambdas to your code, compile. Still works. This isn't like 1.2 where you were adding collections classes (arguably for the first time) or 1.5 where you encounter generics.

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