The Stack Overflow Podcast After 30 years, Java is still brewing up new features
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Jun 17, 2025 Join George Saab, Senior VP of Development at Oracle and Chair of the OpenJDK Governing Board, as he dives into the evolution of Java over the last five years. He discusses the shift to a time-based release model, fostering community enthusiasm, and the collaboration that drives innovation. George highlights exciting projects like Loom and Valhalla and their impact on scalability and modern development. Plus, he shares insights on making Java accessible for beginners while keeping it robust for seasoned developers.
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Java's Rapid Six-Month Releases
- Java switched from feature-based major releases every three years to time-based releases every six months.
- This ensures predictable updates with ready features and improves developer and user satisfaction.
Facilitating Upgrades in Java
- Java's ecosystem and tip-and-tail development method ease upgrading to newer versions.
- They stopped backporting features to old versions, encouraging adoption of the latest stable, feature-rich releases.
Java Innovation Projects Delivered
- Project Loom introduced virtual threads enabling simple synchronous coding at massive scale.
- Projects Amber and Valhalla add pattern matching and compact data carriers, enhancing Java's usability and performance.