Part 1. From 8 to 11 and beyond!

 

These first three chapters are about ramping up to Java 17. You’ll ease in with an introductory chapter that covers some quality-of-life changes that came in with Java 11. You’ll see how the Java ecosystem and release cycle has changed since Java 8, including the following, and what that means to developers:

  • var keyword
  • Collections factories
  • New HTTP client with HTTP/2 support
  • Single-file source code programs

From there, you’ll get a deep dive on one of the biggest changes in the Java landscape in many years—the addition of a full module system. You’ll see why this dramatic change was necessary. It’s been carefully designed for incremental adoption, and along with understanding the concepts, you’ll come away knowing how to start taking advantage of it in your applications and libraries.

Under the new release cycle, Java 17 brings together a significant batch of new language features, including

  • Text blocks
  • Switch expressions
  • Records
  • Sealed types

By the end of part 1, you’ll be thinking and writing naturally in Java 17, ready to use this new knowledge throughout the remainder of the book.