In this talk, Dr Gavin Bierman will outline what’s coming in the near and not so near future for the Java language. They’re planning a number of significant changes to the languages; many of which will be familiar to functional programmers. The talk will also show some interesting quirks of designing features for a language like Java, and where some formalisations help in our design.

Gavin Bierman is a Consulting Member of Technical Staff based at Oracle Labs UK. He is a member of the Programming Language Research Group and is currently a member of the Java team helping design the next versions of Java.

His interests are broadly in the areas of programming language design and formalisation. He has published papers on Java, C#, TypeScript, databases (object-oriented, XML and noSQL), type systems, operational semantics, separation logic, dynamic software updating, relational algebra, lambda calculus, control operators, modal logic, proof theory and category theory.

He joined Oracle in March 2014. Previously he was a senior researcher at Microsoft Research Cambridge from March 2004 until March 2014. Before that he was a lecturer at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and a Fellow, College Lecturer and Director of Studies at St John’s College, Cambridge. He has a PhD from the University of Cambridge, and a BSc from Imperial College.