Finally: Java 9

Land Ho!

For a long time, Java [1] has easily topped the rankings of popular programming languages. This is not surprising; after all, programs developed in Java can be used anywhere from cellphones to mainframes and across all operating systems. However, a glimpse at the former shooting stars Perl and PHP shows that there is no guarantee of permanently riding atop the heap.

Regular updates help keep the language at the cutting edge and the estimated nine million Java programmers happy, but they have needed patience, because major release 9 has taken its time. Originally, it was planned as an interim release to deliver to the themes that were not ready in time for Java 8.1. "As quickly as possible" originally meant mid-2015, then mid-2016, and finally 2017. It remains to be seen whether the project schedule will be followed this time, although test builds are now available online [2].

Jigsawing

One core feature of Java 9 par excellence is the Java Platform Module System that became known as Project Jigsaw [3]. Thus far, the Java compiler and the run-time environment have thrown all available libraries from the class path into a large pot. Whether this turns out to be a tasty soup or smoke and mirrors partly depends on subtle changes in the class path.

Many developer hours have been spent in class path hell battling against the class loader. The problem is, only the right libraries and library versions in the appropriate order result in a working application. Approaches such as Maven, ServiceLoader or OSGI only partially mitigated the situation and had to take a wide detour around the standard libraries.

With Jigsaw, this should be different. The new modular system pervades the entire stack of the

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