The Java Language changes accepted for inclusion in JDK7 have been announced by Joseph Darcy. We already knew that closures were off the menu. So too, unfortunately, is language support for arbitrary-precision arithmetic. The final list is pretty non-controversial and includes a number of changes that will reduce the verbosity of Java programs (one of the main criticisms of Java from proponents of other languages). Java will never be as terse as Perl or Haskell, but that’s no bad thing. One of the strengths of Java is its readability. There are however some areas where the language is needlessly verbose and that’s what these changes are addressing.