Java 8++

Java 8 was released in 2014 and has been my main working horse ever since.

After using Java 8 for so many years now, I’m finally preparing to upgrade. Over the last few years, technical restrictions (backwards compatibility) suggested, that we don’t use newer versions in some of our projects. And I didn’t want to get confused over what features to use where. So I decided to stay on 8 altogether.

So here’s a list of features I’m personally looking forward to:

Java 9 (Sep 2017)

• JEP 254: Compact Strings
• JEP 259: Stack-Walking API
• JEP 269: Convenience Factory Methods for Collections

Java 14 (March 2020)

• JEP 358: Helpful NullPointerExceptions

Java 15 (Sep 2020)

• JEP 378: Text Blocks

Java 16 (March 2021)

• JEP 386: Alpine Linux Port
• JEP 395: Records

Java 18 (March 2022)

• JEP 400: UTF-8 by Default

Future
(not yet included in Java 19, 20)

• JEP 430: String Templates
• JEP 431: Sequenced Collections
• Permanent release of Pattern Matching for switch (JEPs 406 and others), currently available as preview