From Java 8 to Java 11

I'm going to describe a trick to get pattern patching on Optional in Java 21, but one you'll probably never actually use. Using Optional As of Java 21, Pattern matching in Java allows us to check a value against a type like an instanceof with a new variable being declared of the correct type. Pattern matching can handle simple types and the...

How do you start a Java program? With a main method of course. But the ceremony around writing such a method is perhaps not the nicest for newcomers to Java. There has been a bit of dicussion recently about how the "on-ramp" for Java could be made easier. This is the original proposal. Here are follow ups - OpenJDK, Reddit, Hacker news....

TL:DR; Java is still available at zero-cost, you just need to stop using Oracle JDK and start using an OpenJDK build, such as this one or this one. The trap Java 11 has been released. It is a major release because it has long-term support (LTS). But Oracle have also set it up to be a trap (either deliberately or accidentally). For 23 years,...

The Java ecosystem has always been built on a high quality $free (zero-cost) JDK available from Oracle, and previously Sun. This is as true today as it always has been - but the new six-monthly release cycle does mean some big changes are happening. Six-monthly releases Java now has a release every six months, something which greatly impacts how...

From Java 11 its time to think beyond Oracle's JDK. Time to appreciate the depth of the ecosystem built on OpenJDK. Here is a list of some key OpenJDK builds. This is a quick follow up to my recent zero-cost Java post OpenJDK builds In practical terms, there is only one set of source code for the JDK. The source code is hosted in Mercurial at...