Mark Reinhold's post JDK 8: General Availability announced the general availability of JDK 8 this past week. In this post I look at some of the plethora of posts and articles on JDK 8.
General JDK 8 Information
The JDK 8 Release Notes include links to many resources including to the post What's New in JDK 8 that outlines the new features of JDK 8. Other referenced pages include JDK 8 Adoption Guide, Java Platform, Standard Edition 8 Names and Versions, Known Issues for JDK 8, and the Java Platform Standard Edition 8 Documentation.
There are numerous other posts announcing JDK 8 availability. These include Java 8 officially arrives at last, Java 8 is going live today - here's your crib sheet, 8 new features for Java 8, Java SE 8 is Now Available, David Thompson's Six Important New Features in Java 8 (JDK 8), Lucy Carey's Java 8 is the biggest change to the syntax of the JVM since generics in Java 5, 5 Features In Java 8 That WILL Change How You Code, Happy 8th Birthday Java!, and Pierre-Hugues Charbonneau's Java 8 is Now Released!
I've also previously referenced the useful Baeldung Java 8 page and the Java 8 Friday series of posts has useful details on Java 8.
IDE Support for JDK 8
The most commonly discussed Java IDEs (NetBeans, Eclipse, and IntelliJ IDEA) are providing support for JDK 8. NetBeans 8 was released in conjunction with JDK 8 and includes JDK 8 support. Daniel Megert announced "[Eclipse] Luna (4.4) builds contain the Eclipse support for JavaTM 8" and that support for Eclipse Kepler is available with a feature patch. The IDEA 13.1 EAP page lists JDK 8 support as part of this Early Access Program release.
Lambda Expressions
Lambda expressions are arguably the most anticipated and biggest feature of JDK 8. Oracle has provided a Java SE 8: Lambda Quick Start. Other useful resources on JDK 8 lambda expressions include Java Lambda Expressions Basics, Java programming with lambda expressions, and Stephen Chin's Java 8 Released! — Lambdas Tutorial.
Date/Time API
A welcome new feature of JDK 8 is the Joda-inspired Date/Time API. Introductions to the new Java Date/Time API include Oracle's Java Date-Time Packages Tech Notes, Fabian Becker's A new Date and Time API for JDK 8, and Java Time API Now In Java 8.
Nashorn
Project Nashorn, which its OpenJDK page describes as "a lightweight high-performance JavaScript runtime in Java with a native JVM," was announced at JavaOne 2011 and is delivered with JDK 8. There is an Oracle Tech Notes Introduction to Nashorn along with other useful resources such as Java 8: Compiling Lambda Expressions in The New Nashorn JS Engine and Oracle Nashorn: A next-generation JavaScript engine for the JVM.
Miscellaneous New Libraries and Classes
Michael Scharhag demonstrates StringJoiner in Java can finally join strings. Default methods are the subject of Ryan Kenney's Java 8 Default Methods and Multiple Inheritance. Java Mission Control 5.3 is also included with Oracle's JDK 8 (as it has been with JDK 7 since update 40). We also recently learned that JDK 8 will use TLS 1.2 as default.
Conclusion
The arrival of JDK 8 brings much to be excited about. Streams and lambda expressions rightfully dominate the discussion, but many other features of JDK 8 are sure to make Java quicker and easier to use. There is a lot to learn in JDK 8, but fortunately there are numerous freely available online resources to aid this effort. I've tried to summarize a small sample of those resources here.
This story, "The wait is over: JDK 8 is here!" was originally published by marxsoftware.blogspot.com.