Java News Flash! Oracle Lays Out Java 9, 10 Roadmap

Java 9 and 10 will tackle big data, multi-language interoperability, cloud and mobile and ship in 2015 and 2017 respectively, Oracle said Wednesday.

For the Java Development Kit (JDK) 10 or after, a fundamental change is being discussed: making the Java language Object Oriented. This might see the introduction of a unified type system that turns everything into objects and means no more primitives.

• Faster JavaScript engine “Nashorn” replaces the existing “Rhino”.
• Module system “Jigsaw” will make installations smaller, because one only installs those parts of the system that are actually needed by applications. That enables a risk-free way of virtually getting rid of old and deprecated parts of the Java API.
• Support for mobile devices. Quote:
  
  

  JDK 8 will see the Standard Edition of Java (Java SE), which is built for the desktop, updated to run on the kinds of mobile devices that would currently run Java Mobile Edition (Java ME). Oracle believes multi-core and availability of hundreds of megabytes of memory on chips used in smartphones means Java SE can now run on such phones instead of just the desktop.

  
  Note that with Android, there already is a Java-based mobile platform. But Oracle’s desktop APIs (including Java FX) could make cross-platform development easier.