To that end, features like closures are being added to the platform with version 7, said Jeet Kaul, vice president of the client software division at Oracle. In addition to the Java language, the Java development platform also includes the Java Virtual Machine, offering hardware and OS agnosticism on platforms accommodating the JVM.

"There's all kinds of new things that are happening and Java needs to adapt to that," said Kaul, amidst a question-and-answer session at the conference in Santa Clara, Calif.

Closures, or first-class functions and lambda expressions, make it easier to write applications for multi-core programming. Also needed are changes to bolster generics support and more accommodation for other languages, Kaul said. Multi-language support is a focus of the upcoming Java Development Kit 7.

"We need to get the younger generation interested and excited [about Java] just like I was," Kaul said.