In the past, closures were never a serious priority for Java developers. In the early years, the Java designers did not support closures because Java users were skittish about automatically allocating the variables on the heap without an explicit new (see Resources). Today, a tremendous debate circulates around including closures into the base language. In recent years, practical interest in dynamic languages such as Ruby, JavaScript, and even Lisp has led to a groundswell of support for closures in the Java language. It looks like we'll finally get closures in Java 1.7. Good things happen when you keep crossing borders.