Java 18 is here! The latest version of the platform became generally available on March 22. What’s inside? In addition to lots of subtle under-the-hood fixes and updates, you’ll find nine JEPs with improvements to core libraries, new tooling, and preparation for the future.
Note that unlike Java 17, Java 18 is not a Long-Term Support (LTS) release. The next LTS release will be Java 21, set to come out in September 2023. (The length of time between LTS releases was recently shortened to two years.)
Tell me about your Java 18 adoption plans. Are you an early adopter, or will you take a wait-and-see approach? Has your organization decided to focus on LTS releases? Write to me at javamag_us@oracle.com.
Take care, Alan Zeichick Editor in Chief, Java Magazine @zeichick
P.S. JavaOne is back! Mark your calendars to attend Oracle’s official Java tech conference October 16–20 in Las Vegas.
The newest Java Magazine articles
Java 18 is here: 9 JEPs with core library improvements and updates Want a simple web server? Java 18 has one. How about a JEP that reduces the development and maintenance costs of reflection? Internet address resolution? Java 18 has them. Would you like to see code snippets in Java API documentation? That’s there. How about progress on the Vector API, the Foreign Function and Memory API, and pattern matching for switch? Yes: Java 18 evolves all three of those preview and incubator features.
Host a dark service with Java, Spring Boot, and OpenZiti A dark service is a service that’s had zero trust (ZT) principles applied across the board and, therefore, not only to the network layer. Only trusted applications can see ZT services—in other words, if a service isn’t authorized, it’s invisible. Tod Burtchell shows you how to bake the principles of ZT access directly into an application.
Bruce Eckel on simplifying local variable type inference in Java What is type inference? What’s it for? How does it work? While type inference for local definitions has been a feature of Java for several years, this functionality is not always well understood. As Bruce Eckel explains, incorrectly used type inference can lead to code that compiles but does not execute as expected.
Instrumenting applications with Java Flight Recorder Like the black box in a commercial airliner, Java Flight Recorder (JFR) continually records information about a running Java application and the JVM. Thanks to its low overhead, JFR allows profiling to run continuously, even in production environments. Justine Kavanaugh-Brown reports on a conversation with JFR expert Markus Grönlund.
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