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Matt Eland
Matt Eland Subscriber

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Resources on 14 years of Java Changes?

All, I'm looking for some very high-level resources as to how Java has changed since 2006, the last time I worked with the language.

I'm specifically curious as to new language features and how the language may have evolved similarly or differently to C# as I'm a .NET developer.

I realize the question is vague and open-ended, but hopefully someone can point me in a right direction or give me a pie in the sky summary. Just looking for awareness, not implementation details.

Top comments (4)

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

This is a great post

Also you may want to have a look at Kotlin, which is a JVM language that keeps the best of Java but also takes inspiration from other languages, C# very much included, since it comes from JetBrains

kotlinlang.org/

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jitterted profile image
Ted M. Young • Edited

So many changes since then, basically since Java 6 was 2006. Most resources are probably going to start with Java 8, since those were the most substantial changes. This (javarevisited.blogspot.com/2014/04...) has a good summary of Java 7 changes.

For 8 and later, "Modern Java in Action" (manning.com/books/modern-java-in-a...) is a pretty good coverage of 8, 9, and 10. Fewer changes since 11, mostly with APIs and preview features that aren't yet available.

At a high level, the main features added since 8 were lambda expressions and streams, Optional, lots of Collection and String API improvements, and an overhauled Date/Time library. Garbage Collection has also gotten a lot of attention and has improved on every release.

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Matt Eland

Thank you for your detailed and helpful response!

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Clive Da

no better place to start than archive.org => java.com it goes back as far as 2003