[MatthewC529]

Some of the stuff that is recommended I would argue is generally discouraged in terms of common practice (Though Common Practice does tend to fall away in the rush of programming between matches) but I think this is a good overview.

Also quick note, Eclipse Kepler CAN support Java 8 syntax, although you have to search for it in the Eclipse Marketplace and it works only after a certain build so either way I would recommend updating to Eclipse Luna.

Although WPILib wont be refactored and updated to Java 1.8 for the 2015 season I think this is a great move up. I sorely miss Enum's, Generics and all the IO and NIO utilities (Also all the missing Collections!) I have come to love. Plus that means I can port some of my libraries more easily to FRC Code now! Networking will come back to being easier to implement and maintain and all the 1.7 Libraries will be opened, always a plus. Something I am curious about is if JNI will work with the cRIO and using the JNIGen library will make it easier to test allowing for some time and memory consuming processes to be shared between Java and Native Memory.

Still, could Reflection become a problem? I mean altering internal variable at will seems like it could result in unexpected behavior, even as to unexpected behavior returning to the FMS. Of course I am sure it is just common sense to not mess around too much with the WPILib Internal Variables. Just putting it out there.