As long as Oracle doesn't decide to scrap the set of promises that Sun had made for Java 7, that release will resolve many complaints and bring the language forward a bit, at least. It's not going to make Java the most powerful language around by any means, but it will help, and I think we'll start to see much tighter Java code coming out, at least from the people that know what they're doing.
For one thing, it will finally add automatic resource management blocks, which by my understanding do exactly what is being complained about here - they let objects deterministically clean up after themselves without relying on finalization.
What I'm still skeptical about is whether closures will actually make it in or not...it's much harder to add them on after the fact (while still maintaining backwards compatibility) than it is to design a language around them from the start, and I'm not really convinced that Oracle will care enough to see the efforts through to the end; at the very least, I don't see it as likely that it will happen without a serious schedule slip.
Java's chief weakness has been it's lack of first class functions. If closures don't make it in to Java 1.7 then it's game over, it'll be sealed as the COBOL of our times.
For one thing, it will finally add automatic resource management blocks, which by my understanding do exactly what is being complained about here - they let objects deterministically clean up after themselves without relying on finalization.
What I'm still skeptical about is whether closures will actually make it in or not...it's much harder to add them on after the fact (while still maintaining backwards compatibility) than it is to design a language around them from the start, and I'm not really convinced that Oracle will care enough to see the efforts through to the end; at the very least, I don't see it as likely that it will happen without a serious schedule slip.