Although there appears to be a majority in favour, the number in the opposed and not yet camps is significantly higher than for many other proposed changes.

Everybody wants watchable Properties to get binding à la JavaFX. I think the argument against Properties in Java 7 is "we need more time for a deeper reflection (pun intended) on JavaBeans in general". Olivier Allouch

Interesting to note that if you combine votes for first class properties and JSR-295 (Beans binding) it exceeds the second place choice. I think it is fair to combine the votes there because presumable first class properties would not be done in isolation with out a mechanism for binding, and the beans binding JSR was excluded precisely because it only made sense to include in the JRE when the property issue was resolved.

Especially how to get rid of those wildcards. They are a shining example how not to solve a problem in a mainstream language. For very little effect very complicated rules that no programmer completely knows. Maybe using reified generics and covariance of the generic parameters would be a solution. Container without type information (legacy code) should be seen as ContainerClass. Wildcards are such an impractical solution that you see them seldom really used today. If they are already used, a compiler switch should be introduced to compile such code. And stop this "meta annotation" bullshit going on, which is the same intellectual aberration. Language design with bookkeeper mentality without any spirit for elegance, this is the best way to ruin the language, that served many of us so well. The most important Java feature was and is: Java should be easy to remember in order to be an efficient tool! OK, some keystrokes more to formulate something, but there are editors to solve this. Most of the time you have to read other peoples code anyway and then its the best feature of Java to be easy to read and almost self-documenting. If someone likes a more challenging language or believes in the trend of the season "functional programing" than there is Scala. Like for the last seasons trend "Aspect orientation" there is AspectJ. And if the functional concept really has many advantages in the wild, Scala will slowly overtake the status as main language on the JVM. And for the scripting fans there is Groovy. So everyone already has what he needs. So please only make proposals how to simplify Java and gain elegance, not how to further complicate it, (extremely) as in the case of BGGA closures.

I agree with the decision to postpone closures at this point in time. I support the basic idea of closures, or at least some form of function types, and I always thought that anonymous classes were a kludge (albeit a useful one), but it is important that the Java community get this concept right with respect to integration with existing language features. While there appears to be a lot of interest in adding closures to Java, there does not appear to be anything close to a consensus as to the best way to do it.

What the heck are they waiting for?!?!

if these features didn't made into java7, what the hell did? maybe they should release j6 u x+1 how many times did you need this: T object = new T();